


And the Stars Will Be His

by niksthename



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Finn is a Jedi, Finn-centric, FinnPoe happens in chapter 2, FinnPoe really happens in chapter 7 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Finn, Gen, I think it's gonna be all from his perspective, I'll add tags as they become relevant, M/M, Masturbating, yeah that's happening that I know for sure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 04:44:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10779834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niksthename/pseuds/niksthename
Summary: Finn-centric follow-up to ep. VII. Finn is force-sensitive and exploring the world he never got to know. I don't really know where I'm taking this, so it's just as much a discovery for me as you.





	1. Awaken

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have a beta, please forgive the egregious mistakes I know you'll find! Also, I'm a busy college kid, so I don't have a posting schedule for you. My sincerest apologies, I am not a well-put-together adult.

It’s so, so green.

Of course, when he was on D’Qar the first time, it was just as green. But his vision was filled with orange, with curly black hair and bronzed skin running toward him like he was the last man alive on the tarmac. Not days before Finn would have looked at Poe’s face, would have thought that, and then immediately thought that such an idea was silly and factually incorrect.

Now, he’s awake in the medbay, looking out through the transparisteel window and taking in just how much _green_ there is. Not just one color, either. Dozens. Hundreds? When did one color become two? How fine were the differences? To what minutiae did that leaf constitute a different color as it’s neighbor?

Finn doesn’t know, but he does stare.

He’s seen trees before. In his helmet, however, everything was a flat red, or maybe dark red. Certainly some shades of red, but rough and pixelated from the crudeness of the display. There’s a purpose to this, of course. No details, no colors, no visuals. Everything and everyone is muddled where troopers are white-red and generals are black-red. Stark contrast to the chaotic, dirty world of the republic, with all its grey- _red_ -spaces.

All this time, and he’s been denied this- this beauty. This visual diversity with so much detail it nearly makes him cry. Trees have _leaves_ and you can _see_ them. It’s so overwhelming, it’s nearly blinding. And yet he can’t stop staring at it through the window, waiting for his back to heal, for feeling to return to his legs.

And that was interesting. Paralyzed, they’d said. Not permanently, perhaps. If odds were in their favor, if he got lucky, if the damage wasn’t too extensive, the bacta patches and robotic insert to replace a few vertebrae and his spinal cord might get him his legs back. But they didn’t feel dead to him. Or they did? Finn was acutely aware of them, felt them functioning, blood running through them, biologically alive. But that feeling was… out of phase? Out of phase with the feeling of, say, his arms, his hands, his chest. But not too different.

For days after he woke, he sat and thought on it as he stared out at the distant treeline. Finally, on the fourth day, he had a conclusion. He felt everything from the waist up twice, and everything from the waist down only once. A whole and a half. There’s no earthly way to know what it means, not really, so he abandons his reflection and sits numb as he looks out the window.

\------~

On the sixth day, he sees an x-wing land and he knows. He _knows._ Lo and behold, only minutes later, a winded and rough-looking Poe bursts through the door. Finn turns his head against the twinge of pain and watches that face morph from concern and urgency to something bright and happy and big, flashing white teeth with twinkling eyes and crinkles that fold and multiply with his smile. Finn feels his heart lift, but it isn’t unaccompanied. Something hangs heavy there, and he finds the words for it as Poe approaches his bed.

“Where’s Rey?”

\-------~

On the 7th day, he wakes up to a toe wiggle. Poe hasn’t once left his side, not really. Of course, he’s gotten up to run errands, debrief the mission he was on, grab food for them both, talk to medical to get some answers (which he can do as a commander where Finn is still a traitor no one quite trusts, no matter what he did on Starkiller). But Finn can feel himself on Poe’s thoughts everywhere. He’s not sure how he can feel that, but he knows. He _knows._

Poe’s head is resting on the edge of the bed, one arm tucked under his head, their fingers tangled. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but Finn is okay with this. It means something to both of them, though maybe not the same thing. He has no idea. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Poe wakes up almost immediately, sees the wiggle, and jolts upright in his seat. Their fingers don’t detangle.

That smile, that bright, happy smile turns on him again. Finn realizes he’s weak for it. His own smile is perhaps more reserved, but it’s genuine, for Poe.

“You did it, buddy!”

“It’s a start.”

The rest of the afternoon, more and more toes wiggle. Sometimes on purpose. Poe’s smile never dims, and Finn’s only grows to match it. The more it happens, the more he feels like he was being pulled from some sort of fog he’d been in. A familiar fog. A sense of isolation. Just like those tense minutes in the TIE fighter, Poe is a strong wind moving the fog away and leaving Finn standing and seeing clearly for the first time.

\-------~

He loses count of the days, because with Poe always there, it doesn’t matter as much. Finn doesn’t really know why he was counting, so he’s not really sure why exactly it stops, but he certainly appreciates that Poe makes it feel like it doesn’t matter.

One day, Poe helps him out of bed under the careful eyes of a medidroid. And C3PO. Finn’s not sure why the protocol droid is here, but he is, nattering on so endlessly that it becomes background noise almost immediately. By all rights, standing shouldn’t be that hard, he thinks. He’s been feeling his legs for days, wiggling toes and shifting restlessly. Even stretching and drawing his knees up, though not quite to his chest.

They have each other by the elbows when his toes touch the cold duracrete floor. Then the balls of his feet, rolling along the outside of his foot and then his heels. His weight waivers for a moment, knees a bit weak, but soon his body is adjusted and he’s standing. He feels lighter, smiling and laughing excitedly with Poe, testing a bit of an excited bounce on his toes.

For the first time, Finn turns his attention internally and finds that he feels whole again, but he still feels… two. Twice? Something like that. It’s weird and he doesn’t get it, so he turns his attention outwards. There, he feels something.

He feels Poe twice. At least, a little. Feels where their arms are touching, but something deeper feels his whole presence, like a hologram only he can see, and not… not blue. But something. Maybe a few wires got knocked loose when Kylo Ren slashed him. Who knows. Maybe he should ask someone about it.

\-------~

He holds a box, a small one, with nothing in it but two halves of a jacket and some scrubs. It seems so silly that they gave him anything at all to carry, like, three things. But he has it, and he holds it as he stands in the threshold of Poe’s quarters.

“Better actually step in before the door closes on ya, buddy.”

Finn takes a deep breath and steps through, the door sliding shut behind him just as his heel clears it. They’re small, a little cluttered and part of him is itching to clean. Itching to put everything in it’s place. But he knows this isn’t the Order, there isn’t a place for everything to fit neat and tidy behind paneled walls. This is what being human looks like.

Flaws are a foreign concept to him. In the Order, the emphasis was on perfection, and Finn thought, until the day he refused to fire, that he was perfect. Poe’s been explaining that to other people, this is a conceited thing to think. Poe’s also been pointing out his flaws. Not to make him feel bad, feel worse, but to make him feel human.

This all feels so very, very strange. But perhaps that’s also because it feels human, and Finn has never had the luxury of knowing what that meant.

“You doin’ alright, Finn?” Poe is standing before him, looking concerned but keeping that happiness up. He’s been noticing more and more that the… the second Poe he feels seems a lot more sad and stressed than the one that’s always holding his hand, kissing his palm, talking shop about the x-wings. He thinks Poe isn’t telling him something, but he doesn’t know what yet. It makes the question seem ironic.

“Doing great. Just adjusting, I think. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do now.” And wasn’t that true? He had no clue what came next.

Poe takes the box from his hands, drops it carelessly on the floor, which isn’t so unfair as it’s probably all garbage anymore anyway. Finn looks at it, and then Poe’s hands are on his cheeks, gently redirecting his gaze, and he’s under that look again. Like he’s the only man here. Except, it’s a lot more true this time.

“You’re gonna be alright, Finn. I know this must be hard with everything kinda slowing down a minute, but you’ll find your stride. We’re gonna talk to the general tomorrow about what you can start doing. I think I’m gonna ask her to let you shadow me, if you want that?”

He has to think about it, but he realizes… he doesn’t know anybody else. Not just in the base, but in the galaxy. He knows, like, 3 people, and one of them is here, holding his face and causing feelings Finn has never had to understand before. Has never felt before. Something says that sounds corny but he doesn’t know why.

“Are you gonna teach me to fly?”

That bright smile is back, and he feels like it’s genuine. There’s a sort of warmth of life radiating off Poe that Finn is picking up, and his own smile answers.

“Sure, buddy.”

\-------~

Everyone is trying to get the base moved. The Order knows where it is, so the goal now is to find somewhere safe to move thousands of people without being spotted. Poe’s not been going on scouting missions, he’s too important to lose on missions that aren’t reconnaissance, but recon is slow right now with the focus shifted.

Instead, Poe is overseeing the packing and moving needs of all the pilots and their x-wings. Finn is following close behind, but there’s not much he can do, not now, not yet. He can’t even do that much heavy lifting, and he’s never felt so useless in his life. An entire lifetime spent equating his worth to his capabilities, and now… he’s useless. But Poe tells him he’s not worthless and he knows that. But it’s there, drilled into his brain.

So he spends all his time sitting weird, impossible places, out of the way in watching. Roofs of buildings, noses of x-wings, in trees. It’s hard to get up there, but it requires a lot of use of his legs and sometimes it feels like there’s no better way to get in touch with them. It expends energy and time, and Poe always gets this funny look on his face when he spots Finn.

He should really do something about that.

\-------~

There’s a tap.

On the back his mind, there’s a small little tap.

Finn ignores it intently, keeping his focus on the way he’s trying to sense everything out around him. Just like he can feel Poe, Finn notices… he can feel everything. He can feel the tree he’s sitting in, the bird whose nest is high above him, the pilots running around the tarmac far below. He feels Poe more acutely than any of them, and he’s not sure why.

Speaking of, his pilot sees him and waves at him, bright smile directed at Finn and only Finn for a brief moment before he turns back to his duties. _Tap tap tap._

 _What is that?_ He closes his eyes, lets everything slowly drift back to him, blind him to everything he could feel minutes before. Bring it all home and see if he can focus on it, feel what it is. _Tap tap tap._

_”Finn?”_

“What the kriff?!” Was that out loud?

He thinks he’s going to panic, but that’s… not what happens. He feels alright. Something feels safe about this, but he doesn’t know what. But it feels alright.

_”Finn? You don’t have to speak out loud. It’s me!”_

Stars, and he can hear it. The intonation, bright and excited, everything worthy of her awe and getting it. His smile is wide, cheeks a little bit wet as he tries to find her, reach out to her.

_”Careful! Careful, I haven’t quite got this yet. But I found you! I’ve only been able to find Luke so far and-”_

Rey’s gone with vacuous silence. Immediately he misses her, even if it was just a few words. He misses her adventure. She’s off, somewhere far away, learning important Jedi things Finn will never know. He doesn’t know why, but he cares so deeply for her, aches for her. Wishes he could share in the joy she was clearly feeling.

But for now, she’s gone, and Poe is running around the tarmac directing people and loading things, and Finn’s sitting in a tree, feeling useless and wondering what the next chapter will be.

\------~


	2. Connect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More free-form writing. Just kinda... spittin it out. We got a little Kyle Ron in this one, too. I have no beta, I am sorry.

The night before it’s time to go, before the last people leave the old base for the new planet, Poe lays down with Finn. There’s been two bunks this whole time, and that’s been alright. Finn’s used to tight quarters, but not shared beds. But now, Poe lays down with him, facing him and inspecting his face carefully.

Finn smiles, light and easy, and it’s coming more and more readily around Poe to do that now. He knows he was bright and energetic and enthusiastic and fearless in the events leading up to Starkiller, but he’d tamed somewhat with the harsh slap of reality devoid of all that adrenaline. And he doesn’t want to feel that way. He wants to be who he was, even if he was struggling to identify himself.

Poe seems to have no expectations of him. Every different shard of personality Finn finds and glues onto himself, Poe seems perfectly happy with. Celebrates, even. In fact, Poe acts like he’s discovering Finn, when in truth, Finn is only discovering himself.

Maybe Poe is one of those pieces. Is a person even a part of yourself? Finn feels like they could be. There are lots of small pieces, food he likes, music he likes, things he’s capable of. Those lists are growing, becoming more and more little tiles on the mosaic that makes him. But so many of those come from Poe that Finn wonders if they’re overlapping, or sharing.

Or maybe he’s thinking about all this too much.

Poe lays on his bed, puts a hand to his cheek. The room is almost empty, just mattresses and a change of clothes for each of them left over. Not even sheets. Finn smiles at him.

“We have to go soon. Won’t be a long trip now we know the jump path, but we gotta make sure we got no one on our tail.”

“I trust you.”

Maybe those hadn’t been the right words.

Because now, Poe’s looking at him with an expression Finn just can’t quite read. He tries reaching out to figure it out, but it’s still undecipherable. At least, it is to him. He doesn’t recognize what it means, only that he’s felt it before. But he has felt it before, and he tries to remember when.

When Poe touches his shoulder. When Poe tells him he’s proud of how fast Finn is picking up the mechanics of the x-wings. When he catches Poe watching him across the table at meals, spoon or fork half-way lifted to his mouth. When Poe tells him goodnight every night.

Why would Poe feel like that over his fumble? He said the wrong thing, surely. Stars, he wasn’t good at deciphering any of this.

“Finn, I-”

“Why do you feel that way? What are you feeling? I can feel it but I don’t get it.” Again, these seemed like the wrong words, because Poe looked confused. And concerned.

“What do you mean you can feel it? What are you feeling?”

“This isn’t about me.” Poe looks a tad exasperated at that, even if he keeps a patient demeanor.

“I’m not trying to deflect, I promise, I’m just curious what you mean. You feel it? Feel what?”

“The way you feel,” he swallowed, finally tearing his eyes away, wondering if he was doing something wrong. “I can feel the way you feel. Better than anyone else, but I can feel it. It’s- it’s practically radiating off you.”

Poe’s expression changes. His feeling changes, too, and it feels like a creeping warmth that sinks into his chest as it radiates out. “What else do you feel, Finn?”

“Warmth? And curiosity? It’s-” He closes his eyes, trusting Poe with his moment of privacy as he reaches out again like he’d been practicing in the tree. They’re the last people here, no more anything, and without people, Finn feels so much more of the forest, the base, brimming with life. “I can feel plants, and animals, and trees. Everywhere. They’re everywhere around me. Like I can see them, but not.”

He opens his eyes again and this time, there’s a look of wonder in Poe’s eyes. Wonder, and maybe something like longing, though it barely lasts and Finn isn’t sure if he saw it or felt it.

“Is this how Rey talked to me?”

“Rey talked to you?!”

“Yeah! I mean- I don’t know quite how, but it was like… in my head. I could hear her like a thought.”

“I think you’re force-sensitive, Finn. Just like Rey.” And Poe is smiling still, wide and bright, but Finn doesn’t think that’s what he was going to say. Whatever it was, though, it’s clear Poe has moved on, and Finn really isn’t sure why.

\-------~

The freighter isn’t that large. The last few pieces of tech that Poe couldn’t wipe or didn’t trust are on board and taking up space, so Finn and Poe sacrifice the second bunk to junk just to make the walkways less cluttered. They share the other bunk. It’s only for two nights, but the whole time, Finn feels like Poe wants to tell him something, but won’t. And Finn… Finn just can’t figure out what it would be.

\-------~

The new base is green in a whole new way. Finn thought he had surely seen every green there was to see, but this place… it’s temperate and a bit dark, every bit of light filtered through truly massive trees that tower so high they disappear into the planet’s soft clouds. There must be light up there somewhere because the clouds reflect rainbows he just catches on the corners of his vision as he turns away from staring at them. It’s so beautiful, so new, and once again, Finn finds himself sitting out the stuff he doesn’t know how to do, staring up at all these new colors.

After a couple days, he manages to scout out a tree, huge and wide with trunks off its trunks. Or are those branches? The size is so colossal that he’s really not all that sure. But that’s not important. He finds he can climb up it (with some effort) and there’s a wide, flat area that all the branches, or trunks, or whatever branch off from. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it’s private and comfortable and away from all the people he can feel but can’t quite turn off yet.

Two days after discovering it, he manages to come up there with a spare broom. There’s eons of detritus caught there, even some small animal bones, and it’s all turning to dirt with time. He sweeps it all away, exposes the brown, smooth bark beneath. Some patches are curing and peeling away from the tree, revealing a bright orange-pink wood underneath. It’s so stunning, he spends an afternoon just staring, slowly peeling back the curling bark to see more of the vibrancy hidden down there. He’s not sure why he likes it, but it feels appropriate somehow.

Another few days, the bark and lingering dirt drying enough to be swept again and cleaned further, and Finn realizes why. He’s looking a large curl, the fade of the wood. It goes from dirty pink, stained by the dirt, to something fresh and nearly orange right under where he peels it away. It reminds him of Rey. On Jakku, he got hit upside the face by a girl so used to protecting herself, but not too tired to protect someone else.

He’d been thinking of their time on Takodana and Starkiller as this side of her blooming into something full and realized, there for everyone to see. Her motivations were complex and layered, but the more they did together, the more she opened up and he saw the truth of her person. She was good, in a way he thinks falls outside what most in the Resistance might think.

But that’s wrong. Rey didn’t bloom, she was exposed. Life on Jakku, hard and gritty and dry, roughed her up around the edges until she could cope. Kylo Ren, the First Order, they peeled that away just like Finn is peeling at this bark, exposing what’s below. He misses her. He’s sure now that if he saw her again, she wouldn’t be like the creeping, radiant warmth of Poe. She’d feel stoic and firm and saturated with life and passion and good intent. _Stars_ how he misses her.

\--------~

Time passes and Finn finds himself going up to the tree more and more. He’s getting stronger again, learning how to use the cybernetics in his back to reduce the strain. He drags up parts and piece for tinkering, data pads for reading, a tarp to cover it all when he’s not there. The wood is becoming slowly worn and chipped, so slowly it’s almost imperceptible, but he can see it.

And then one day, he wants to show Poe. The pilot knows of it, of course, but for some reason… Well, Poe had to leave for a scouting mission the next day, longer than any mission he’d been on since Finn woke up, and Finn has spent the last two days trying to decipher how he feels about it. He wants to talk to Poe about it, but up here, in the first space ever that has felt like his.

First, though, Poe has to marvel. Finn doesn’t get it until he reaches out, feels the pure awe Poe is experiencing, and then… he kinda gets it. It’s one thing to watch it happen slowly over time, but now, Finn directly compares the first time he came up here with how it looks now. Clean, old blankets and rugs others wanted to toss spread out and around to protect the tree as he tinkers. Mechanical items, parts and tools, in neat piles or on boxes stacked around. A long, empty area that Finn left specifically for laying down and staring up at the myriad of leaves that go so much further past what he can see.

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“What?” It’s clear Poe is being pulled from the wonderment by Finn’s voice, soft and uncertain.

“Your mission. It’s a long while, and I don’t want you to get hurt. I want you to make it back in one piece.”

There’s some kind of look in Poe’s eyes. That feeling Finn _still_ can’t decipher. “Thanks, Finn. Everyone worries, but I’m the best for a reason. I always make it back alright.”

This is true, but Finn knows that’s not what he’s feeling. He shuffles his feet, looking down at the smooth bark that cracks in places as it tries to curl away. _”It’s ok, Finn. Peel a little back, expose. He’ll understand.”_

“Finn?”

“I didn’t feel this way, in the Order. I knew a lot of guys. I was even friends with a couple. But going planetside, watching one of our own die, I didn’t feel that way. Facing fatal drills, I didn’t feel this way. Why does my stomach hurt, Poe? It feels all tight and unhappy, and my chest feels odd and light around you and I don’t understand it. I’m scared for you. I want you to come back. I want Rey to come back. I feel like I need you.”

Poe’s only a couple feet away, but he comes closer, and Finn looks up then. His eyes feel suspiciously close to being wet, and maybe he should try to explain himself better? Maybe-

Poe kisses him then.

It’s small and odd, because Finn’s mind hasn’t had to wrap around this situation, what people do to express affection. He’s never had to express it before, but he understands why this works now. He feels exactly the same, taught and nervous and queasy. But he also feels… relief.

Most importantly, it’s private. Privacy, which he’s never really had. Something that feels important, like maybe the most important, and Finn is so happy he gets to have it quietly. Privately.

\-------~

A few days after Poe leaves, Finn feels tapping at the back of his mind again. He’s sitting in his tree, laying on the worn bark with his eyes closed, basking in the indirect warmth of the sun trying to reach past the trees. Lately, he’s been feeling a pull to sit in utter, quiet silence and just _feel_ everything around him. There was a lot of patient waiting in the Order and he feels like he’s putting those skills to a new use now.

So, it alarms him to feel that soft intrusion. Or rather, it only starts soft. Very soon, as Finn tries to poke back in a way he doesn’t understand, it feels very angry, very forceful. Like some oily pimple, a flood of emotions bursts quite suddenly into his head and has him recoiling mentally.

_”TRAITOR!”_

It’s not Rey.

He has no idea what to do with this situation. Rey’s intrusion had been welcome and exciting, this was- was _Kylo Ren._ A villain in his mind and to the galaxy. A monster.

Finn’s instinct, however, isn’t fear. Later, he might wonder where his indignant anger was to match, but something- something in him is calm in this moment. Just as on Starkiller, he gathers himself into a serene strength and shields the invasive hate from spreading any further. It’s a strange concept, to stand guard over one’s own mind.

“Murderer.”

_”As if you are not the same. I saw the blue beam of my grandfather’s saber disappear into troopers chests. I saw you slaughtering your own kind. I cannot believe I did not sense it in you sooner. I will never be as blind again.”_

And… Kylo’s not wrong. Finn has killed. On Takodana, he killed with ease, without hesitation. He knows his claim is that he refused to kill innocents, refused to slaughter a village, but… well, he knew troopers. He knew nearly all of them were nothing more than stolen children raised and trained for a purpose. Were they innocent? Was he?

_”I am uninterested in your tedious moral quandaries.”_

“I suppose you’re right, we’re both murderers, but I’m not anywhere near the same level as you. What do you want? What are you doing here?”

There’s a long silence, but the rage recedes. His mind is left feeling almost vacant in its absence, and he wonders why Kylo would grant him this.

_”I wanted nothing, traitor. You called for me.”_

What? “I did no such thing!”

_”Lies! You have dragged me here with the gravitational pull of a star. Why would I otherwise waste such time on someone so worthless?”_

“When you find someone worthless, maybe you’ll have an answer.” He snickers at his own joke, believing fully that Kylo is capable of nothing here. It also helps him ignore the growing sense of dread in the pit of his stomach.

 _”Is this a joke to you? How is it you are so calm with such an invasion in your mind?”_ The question seems… nearly apprehensive. There’s something there that Finn doesn’t understand, like so many things.

“If you could do what you wanted, I could not stop you. If you can’t do anything, I have no reason to be afraid. Fear will get me nowhere, nor will it ever. Do you think I felt fear when I held the lightsaber to you? It’s a luxury troopers were never granted.”

This conversation is lasting longer than he would have guessed, though not necessarily longer than he cares for. The day will come when he faces Kylo again, and that day will also be the day he kills the man. For everything, for every life he has slain, but more importantly, for Rey and Poe and Han. Any information he can glean now is something that will help him when that day finally comes.

There is no response, just an absence in his mind that feels like a deafening void. He’s alone again. Finn opens his eyes up at the bright, soft light and squints. He has many questions, and it no longer seems enough to sit and think on them. He needs someone who knows something. But where does Finn find that person?


	3. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn is sad. People are very frustrated by this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made an effort. Sorry for the delay and any typos I know you'll find.

The 12th day of Poe’s mission, they lose contact. Finn grabs a tarp and some spare rebar and starts sleeping up in his tree, shielded from the occasional rain. Being in Poe’s quarters doesn’t feel right, and his own feel lonely and empty in a way that is foreign and unwelcoming. So he sticks to his tree.

\-------~

Six days later and Poe still hasn’t come back in contact. Finn is terrified, but what can he do? Nothing but wait. Wait and wait and wait.

So he lays back, stares at the leaves high in the trees as if he can see the sky, the stars beyond them. But there’s nothing there, nothing that will show him Poe, wherever he is, whether he is safe.

_”You feel fear.”_

Not this again.

_”If you feel such fear, why are you so calm?”_

“What other choice do I have, Kylo Ren?”

_”Kylo will suffice. Should you not go looking for him? Go fight for him? You must know why his absence bothers you so.”_

“What good am I? I don't know how to fly, I'm alone, I don't know where he is. Running off half-cocked to get away from you made sense. The same isn't true now.”

_”You didn't run from me, you ran from the Order. We are not one and the same.”_

“Coulda fooled me. If it walks like the Order and talks like the Order and lives on Starkiller base eating from Snoke’s hand, it's probably of the First Order.”

_”You do not know of what you speak.”_

“Whatever, Kylo. I'm not in the mood.”

\-------~

A couple hours pass in relative silence. As relaxed as he gets, he never drifts off, mind to acutely aware that each passing minute increases the odds that Poe never returns. He doesn't like these thoughts, doesn't want them, but he wasn't raised for impracticality. A part of his mind, which he hates for giving up, is already working on a game plan if Poe truly never does return. It's not a good plan by any stretch, but it's trying. He wishes it would stop.

_”I do not understand.”_

Finn sits up with a jolt, rubbing his hands over his face. “I thought you’d left! Quit spying on me!”

_”I was not spying. If you had made any effort at all, you would have known my presence.”_

“Oh, so it’s my fault is it?”

_”Yes. You are sensitive to the ways of the Force, you must start learning to use it to your advantage.”_

“I’m getting really sick of people telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. What would I even do with it? I don’t know anything else but to be a killer.”

_”Use it to your own whims, obviously. You already seem to know how to meditate. Frustratingly, that is most of what you must learn. Meditate and attune your body to the Force.”_

“And why are you trying to coach me in this? What should I care what you think I should do with- with whatever this is?”

_”Because you could be quite powerful. With such power, you can carve out your own place in the galaxy. I could teach you.”_

His voice takes on a mock-sweet tone. “Aww, are you trying this because Rey told you no? What makes you think I’d be any more inclined to join you? Are you hoping there’s some obedient trooper left in me? Because you could not be more wrong.”

The silence lasts so long that Finn very nearly thinks Kylo has finally left him alone. And yet when he tries to go prodding through his own mind, he doesn’t quite feel alone. So far, Kylo’s words have meant nothing to him. So what if he’s actually Force sensitive? He has no teacher, and he most certainly would never be as powerful as Rey. She was off with Luke anyway. How would he learn? Why should he even bother? His life wasn’t going to amount the same great things Rey’s would. His best day would likely be fighting some fight for the resistance and dying in a dog fight.

_”You don’t even believe in the Resistance.”_

“I believe in beating the First Order and I believe in Poe.”

_”Are you going to let another define your life?”_

This is getting frustrating and something is itching at the back of Finn’s mind. He wants this conversation to end, but he’s not sure how to make that happen. So he uses the only thing he’s really got; honesty.

“Better him than me. I don’t know who I am. Outside the Order, outside the Resistance. I don’t know who I should be. I just know that I don’t want to keep killing innocent people. But I’m not even sure I know what innocent means past those villagers on Jakku.”

Silence and peace do come, but not before Finn is filled with a startling sense of doubt. Not his own, either, it feels like it’s spilled into him from somewhere else. Doubt and remorse. In a flash, they’re gone. Kylo is gone. He’s alone again waiting desperately for Poe’s return.

\-------~

It’s been two weeks since Poe lost contact and Finn is starting to lose hope, starting to go out of his mind. He spends almost all his time up in his tree, only really comes down for the ‘fresher and meal times.

Everyone looks at him with this sad expression. He doesn’t recognize it, but he can feel what they mean by it. They pity him. It’s not something he’d ever felt in the First Order. Pity wasn’t a good quality, it was beaten and trained out of troopers and top brass alike. But it’s everywhere around him here. Poe’s squadron is looking at him and it’s coming off them in waves, even though they all knew Poe longer and better than Finn maybe ever will.

So he comes down for his meals, sits alone, keeps his eyes down and rushes through it as fast as he can. He knows he should be making friends, that Poe would want him to get to know Black Squadron, but he can’t make himself do it. Not yet. Trying to know them better without Poe feels like defeat. Like he thinks Poe will never get the chance to properly make Finn and his team meld. He’s not ready to admit that yet.

\-------~

Three weeks and Finn is still finding new greens in the trees, new browns in the bark and soil, new things that cause him to cry. He finally has to admit, now that he comes down for meals less and less, that he isn’t okay. He’s not even sure if it’s just because Poe is gone, but he’s not okay.

His days are spent up in his tree, training and tinkering and doing the only things he really knows how to do. He doesn’t want Poe to come back and find him useless and wasting away, even if he’s at least one of those things sometimes. Even if he feels it.

He’s sitting and tinkering and he feels that tap tap tap again. Finn tries to ignore it, messing with the broken compressor in his hands that he can’t really see past the blur of salty tears. The muscles of his cheeks hurt from scowling like he’s two seconds from sobbing at any given moment. He remembers overhearing Rey saying with such pride she bypassed a compressor. He doesn’t even know what this thing does, but he’s trying to learn. Trying to fix it. Nothing is working, as far as he knows, but he’s trying.

_tap tap tap_

What now? Whoever it is, he’ll let them in.

_”Finn? It’s-”_

“Hey, Rey.”

_”Finn, you have to talk to someone.”_

The tinkering stops and he looks up, though he knows there will be no one there. Instinct, maybe? “What are you talking about?”

_”Well, I don’t really know how to describe it, but Finn, you’re… projecting. So much sadness. Master Luke and I have been feeling it all week, maybe longer, and we didn’t know where it was coming from, but you… stars, Finn. I think I can feel you and Luke can feel me, but whatever it is, you have to talk to somebody about it. Maybe Poe?”_

Except that’s the problem isn’t it? That pain bounces around his chest again, and he feels tight and torn up from it. “Poe’s been missing for three weeks. Never came back from his last mission.”

_”Oh Finn… have you talked to Leia, maybe? She might… I don’t know, she might have some insight.”_

“I think she’s too busy, Rey.”

_”Would you at least try? Please? We’re going a little crazy over here, Finn. Maybe just go and tell her that Luke says hi and we’ll be coming back soon?”_

It’s hard to feel excited when he feels like such a large piece of him is missing. “Is that true? You’ll be back soon?”

There’s a long silence, so long that Finn very nearly thinks Rey has lost the connection again. _”Yes. I don’t know how soon, but it’s- we’re working on it. We’ll be home soon. Master Luke very much would like to meet you. I have to go, Finn, but just… please talk to Leia? Talk to somebody.”_

Just like that, she’s gone again.

\-------~

He doesn’t go down. He knows he should, knows Rey wants him to, but making his body move seems too hard still. Too difficult.

There’s another tap tap, but this one feels angrier. He knows who it is before he opens his mind.

_”Is your anguish ceaseless?”_

“What?”

_”For weeks, I have felt you like a cloak over my own existence. Why are you so… sad?”_

It very nearly feels like Kylo spits the word at him, but Finn is too tired and too far away from Kylo to care. He is getting a little worried about the frequency of these chats, though. “Poe’s missing. Probably d- gone. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, it’s probably your fault.”

_”Why do you care so deeply? How do you function when you feel this sad?”_

His questions sound genuine, which is… strange, but Finn doesn’t think on it too hard. He can’t, right now. His heart can hardly spare the room to feel about anything but the absence of his only friends. He thinks about that soft kiss he shared with Poe, how it will likely be the only he’ll ever experience. He would have done so much more if he had known.

“I’m not functioning. Not really. Everyone looks at me with- with pity. I don’t want pity. I want solutions, I want him back. When they look at me like that, they admit he’s lost. That he’s gone. I didn’t join the resistance for foregone conclusions.” I joined it for him.

_”He will find his way back to you soon. Please take heart in this, please stop suffering so… so loudly.”_

“Kylo, what the kriff are you-” But his words fall short. He’s alone. He’d say Kylo was lying, but something deep in his core tells him that that isn’t true. Believes that Kylo knows what he’s saying and means it. Finn can only wonder how.

\-------~

A day finally comes when circumstances line up perfectly for him to talk to the General. Two days of skipping meals and he’s too hungry, nearly falls on his way out of his tree. A strong wind rolls through the upper branches of the tree, the wood distantly creaking and cracking. Until a loud snap is heard, followed by whipsy crashing sounds and clapping wood.

Finn sees it as if in slow motion, a rotted log likely sick from some kind of tree rot falling fast toward the base. It’s a little taller than him, he thinks, and larger around. It’s heading right for an x-wing with a pilot still buried in one her engines, clattering around with things Finn doesn’t understand. Without thinking, he runs to it, and does…

...well, something.

All of his remaining energy exerts into this one motion. He throws… something at it. The Force, maybe? Something. Some part of himself, invisible and larger than his reach for sure, pushes the log just enough, just enough. It’s all he needs. It lands with a crash on the tarmac and falls to pieces, missing everything and everyone.

Finn stumbles where he steps, limbs feeling heavy and useless now, like all his energy went into that one action. The crash caused a stir and a gathering of resistance people, trickling out from all around the base to see what the commotion was. His head swims and it takes Finn a careful, graceless moment to fall on his ass just so he doesn’t fall for real.

Behind him, he feels a warm presence. It makes him nervous for no real reason and when he turns to see who it is, his head only swims more. Stars, he feels so tired. He wants to take a nap. And who’s that standing there behind him? It’s the General, of course. Of course.

She bends down and rests a hand on his shoulder and Finn suddenly feels the weight of her full attention. What a bright and strong weight it is, truly. Like he’s the only one who matters. “Finn?”

Right, he had to speak with her. The words stick in his throat, leaving him feeling parched and useless. Right. He had things to tell her, though, so he has to croak them out. He has to.

“They’re coming home.”


	4. Settle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn gets a nickname and makes a new friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to finnsajedi on tumblr for letting me bounce some ideas around for this. More of said ideas will show up in later chapters but this was the start of it. Might get a beta soon? In the meantime, sorry for the typos I know you'll find. I tried to do a little research before I went off characterizing the good folks in Black Squadron. Yes, I realize they're not actually Black Squadron anymore post-movie, but I like them so nyeh.

In retrospect, he should have realized that “they’re coming home” was vague at best, utterly useless at worst. To her credit, the General hadn’t been as disappointed in him as he thought, had wanted to talk to him about what he thought he knew after what happened on the tarmac.

She was rightfully skeptical about Poe’s return. In fact, she barely gave it a thought, questioning him more on his ability to speak with “Ben” than why the man would speak of Poe’s return and why Finn would believe it. Actually, she asked a lot of questions about Finn’s ability to talk to Rey and Kylo both. Finn kept trying to make it clear that he never reached out to them, they came to him, but that didn’t stop the barrage of questions. Finally, after a couple hours, she sends him on his way to get the meal he’d come down for.

It’s dinner time in any case. Finn doesn’t pay much attention to what’s being put on his plate, but he does ask for more than usual. Leia had chastised him for being a fool and not keeping up his health, and she’d been right. Actually, she’s chastised him a lot. It hadn’t sounded much like the chastisement he knew, but by the end, Finn definitely left feeling very put in his place.

So Finn is going to try. He takes the tray of food, looks around the mess hall at all the face he doesn’t recognize. So many, a sea of faces. Some of them don’t even really look like faces to him, but Poe had told him it was rude to say that. Stars, how he wishes Poe were here to help him navigate this.

But he can’t rely on Poe. The part of him that had been making a plan if Poe really never came back sort of pipes up with this knowledge. He can’t always wait on the familiar faces he knows to make this new world easier to consume. After all, he chose to be here. He has to make his own way. As much as he loves Poe, loves Rey… the chances that they’ll be the rest of his world for the rest of his life are laughably, hilariously small. He has to do better.

His tray clatters softly on the metal tabletop as he sits next to Black Squadron. There are other people there Finn doesn’t know, but then again he doesn’t really know any of these people. Just their names, some of them. Their eyes all turn to him and the table sits in silence for a moment. It’s painfully awkward, truth be known, but Finn… has to do this. It should be no different than eating with his squadmates back on Starkiller, right? Right.

The silence stretches on and Finn can’t find the right words to break it. Finally, Snap seems to do it for him. “So. Finn. I got it on good authority that a KX12 found its way up into that nest of yours. Ever planning on bringing it back down?”

It takes Finn a second to zero in on what the kriff Snap is talking about. Then he remembers that laser cannon that accidentally went off and nearly blew a trunk off. The poor wood was charred and splintered, but the blast had been too weak. He’s been tinkering on it for a little while, trying to learn how it works so he can fix it.

“Oh. Uh. I was gonna when I got it fixed up. I can just try to haul it back down if you need it. Looked like it was gonna get scrapped.”

“Hey man, if you can fix it, I know a few mechanics who would shake your hand personally and then give you a few more. Not that we can’t do it, it’s just… well, time consuming and dangerous. By the sounds of it, you’ve been tinkering with a lot of spare parts up in that tree.”

Was he about to be in trouble? From what Finn could tell, there wasn’t a clear tone indication that would let him know one way or the other if he should answer this honestly. But then the thinks, Snap is someone Poe trusts with his life. That’s why he’s on Poe’s elite squadron. He was hand selected. He can trust Snap, give him an honest answer.

“Yeah, I, uh, there’s a lot of tools and parts that seemed to get scrapped and I figure, if no one cares I might as well learn on em, you know? I know it’s not a new idea but putting that much time in salvage just isn’t worth it to most of you guys, not with how much other work there is to be done. Hope it’s alright I’ve been hoarding things up there.”

There’s a weird thought. Hoarding is something Finn had never in his life done. When had this happened? He thinks about his place in his tree and how much, just, _stuff_ there was up there. He maybe should have noticed sooner how it looked almost purposefully different from any space he’d seen in the order.

Kare drags him back out of his thoughts, and he notices her easy, gentle smile when she speaks. It’s placating, he realizes, like she’s trying to preemptively soothe him. “No skin off our noses, kid. If it helps you learn to become a better mechanic, well… we could always use more of those.”

“More pilots, too.” And that’s Jess. Finn knows Poe likes her. Well, he likes them all, but he likes Jessica. Even if Finn isn’t totally sure what the difference is yet. “Poe ever talk about trainin’ you on one of the x-wings? I tell you, he’ll want to now when he gets back! You definitely have the Force and the way I always heard it, that makes for some pretty ace pilots.”

There’s a hush that falls over the table. Finn knows what she said to put it there, and Snap is giving her some kind of look that Finn thinks means he wants her to stop talking. He doesn’t want that, though. Jess is the first person he’s heard talk about Poe like he’s coming back, aside from Kylo who is unreliable for obvious reasons. What’s really impressive is the way Jess seems to almost glare back at them all for their looks. She doesn’t care what they think, she knows what she believes. Finn can see it in the tilt of her jaw, the firm set to her brow as she defiantly says “What?!” knowing exactly why everyone at the table is looking at her.

“Not in front of the kid, Pava, not after-”

“I’m not a kid.” Finn isn’t expecting it from himself, either.

“What? Sorry, Finn, it’s an expression and I was just-”

“I know what it is. I’m not a kid. I never got to be a kid. I may be younger than you all, but I promise I’m a better soldier in a lot of ways. I know what death is, I know that your team doesn’t always make it back in one piece. I used to get in trouble for trying to help guys who got taken down because I kriffing hated leaving them to die.”

Down the length of the table are a series of facial expressions that Finn just… doesn’t quite understand. But he can feel each pilot sitting there, can sort of feel how their feeling, so he slowly starts piecing together their expressions and their emotions. Jess is giving him some kind of prideful look, he thinks, that same expression as earlier but with less of the defiance. There’s also respect there, something he think is approaching camaraderie as the resistance understands it. Already, he likes her reaction the best.

Snap… well, Snap gives Karé a look before he looks back at Finn, and it’s… well, afraid isn’t the right word. But he’s taken aback, his guard is up. It’s like he doesn’t know how to feel about Finn. There’s also a bit of pity there, a bit of disbelief. Finn can almost _feel_ Snap thinking he’s overcompensating for something. It’s a bit annoying.

And Karé? She just looks puzzled. There’re no judgments that Finn can feel about what he said so much as surprise that he said anything at all. Out of all of them, Finn wants most to be friends with Pava. She seems like the one most likely to take him seriously and if he’s going to expend energy trying to befriend these people, he’d rather start where he thinks he has the most common ground, get the hang of the process before committing to trying with someone more reluctant or doubtful.

All that silence lingers before Jess breaks it. “Well? Apologize to the man, Snap! You heard him! He’s a proper soldier and he’s on our side now. Besides, word is he said Poe’s coming back. I don’t know how he knows, but he delivered on Starkiller. I trust him.”

He’s definitely starting with Pava.

\-------~

A week later, Poe still isn’t back, Rey and Luke still aren’t back, and Finn isn’t sure where his hope is at. It’s not gone, but it’s not really up, either. But he’s been distracting himself, getting that KX12 repaired. Once he sat down to put actual effort into it, it got a lot easier. Most of the delay was from scrounging the missing parts he needed from the mechanic’s junk.

By now, Finn’s rigged up something of a pulley system to get things in and out of the tree. It also helps him on his way up on days when his pain flares up and the climb just seems too strenuous, but he’s working on finding a better solution for those days. Anyways, it’s this system that he uses now to lower the laser cannon back down to the ground, sitting on it as he slowly releases the rope to lower him and his payload. Once he’s down, he grabs one of the rolling carts from the tarmac and loads it up, then wheels off to find Jess Pava.

When he does find her, she’s halfway under some sort of engine he doesn’t recognize at all. Her legs are poking out, one propped up while the other is outstretched. Finn hesitates for a moment as he watches her work, then realizes he might spook her if he just speaks up out of the blue. He should have been louder in his approach. Should he say something? Leave and come back? This is… this situation is difficult, he decides. Walking up on unawares mechanics is not something he’s done before, as stormtroopers are never really so… indisposed? Everything is done in groups, he’s never had to worry about spooking people before. So he decides his best course of action is to walk away, then come back with heavier footfalls while he clears his throat and ruffles his jacket. For all intents and purposes, he just walked in a large circle.

It works like a charm. Jess rolls out from under the engine, grease smeared on her undershirt and upper arms where she’s clearly been wiping her hands. Finn watches her attention go from him to the cart with the engine to him again, all while she grabs a rag and passively wipes herself off. He shifts his weight a little, clears his throat again, is about to speak.

“See you brought me something? So why’d you walk away and back again?”

Sith-dammit. “Uh- yeah, it’s the laser cannon we were talking about last week, for the T-70 I think? And I- I didn’t want to startle you while you were working on something.”

If Pava thinks this is weird, she says nothing of it. “I see. Well thanks for the consideration, Aces. The cannon is great, we have a fleet of T-70s just like Poe flies from the early New Republic days. Any number of those ships could use a new working cannon. We’ve been spreading em thin, not many of the fleet have the full working four after what we lost at Starkiller. Hell, Poe might even need this once he gets back.”

In an odd display Finn doesn’t fully understand, she winks at him as she stands. She whistles- rather shrilly -at Snap and waves him down. He looks impressed, opens his mouth to say something, and Jess shushes him. “Worry about it later, Snap. Find a good place to put this until we know who gets it. Finn and I are gonna hit the mess hall for lunch.”

“We are?”

“Sure. Can’t have been easy getting this thing down from your tree and I know I didn’t see you at breakfast. Gotta keep your energy up, Aces can’t fly on empty stomachs. Fuel tanks, maybe, but you gotta be sharp to pull that shit off.”

\-------~

“So why Aces?”

“Hmm?”

Finn’s looking down at the bread and bowl of some kind of stew on his tray. This food is so different from anything the First Order ever fed them, and on days like today, it finds it simply too rich to be palatable. “You kept callin’ me Aces. Why?”

“I figure you're aces all the way around is all. You fixed that cannon the mechanics wanted to scrap. I wouldn’t know it but I hear tell you’re a pretty solid soldier. Poe told us all about how fast you were picking up the guns on the TIE fighter, and I saw you push that log away from the ship. I only know family stories about the Force, but you have it if they’re true, and I just bet that makes you a great pilot someday if you ever care to learn. So, aces all around. Not that Poe isn’t a great guy, but Finn from FN? Not the most original. Figure you could use some options.”

And Finn kinda has to… mull over all that for a minute. He’s really not sure how he feels about it yet, the name itself, but he thinks he can appreciate what Jess is trying to do. It wasn’t the first time he’d been given some kind of nickname. In fact, nicknames were all he had. But “Aces” wasn’t the same as Finn. It was more like Eight-Seven. A sort of acceptance into a unit. Or at least, it felt that way. He had to be sure.

“So… do you give all the new recruits nicknames like that?”

“Nope. Usually, the squadrons give each other their own names. Might get picked up by the rest of us, but it’s usually for personal use. I know Snap’s a bit hesitant still, but I think you’ll be a fine addition to Black Squadron, even if it’s more… symbolic, for now.”

“And why is Snap hesitant?” Jess seems to be welcoming and open to him right now, so why not get some information on the rest of the crew? Poe would be proud of him, he thinks. Will be proud of him, when he gets back.

In response, Jess shrugs a little. “He’s distrustful a lot of the time. This fight isn’t one he came into too willingly or easily, and he’s been burned before. He trusts Poe’s judgment, but he’s… it’ll take a little bit, you know? All of us have faced troopers before, but he’s faced em more in-person than some of us. We all know you left, we all know you’re a good man, but that distrust runs deep. It’ll just take time.”

Finn stays silent, doesn’t really have anything to say. He knew, of course, that a lot of people didn’t trust him. It was only fair. His awakening had been perhaps years in the making, he remembered the early seeds of doubt after being told over and over to leave Slip behind, but it all sort of snapped into focus watching his unit slaughter innocent people. Being on the other end of those blasters? He couldn’t blame anyone for wanting nothing to do with him, no matter how reformed he seemed.

They eat in silence for a few minutes, both of them clearly mulling over the information, or perhaps other things in Jessika’s case. Who knew? But he eats, even if he’s slow, trying to keep his energy up. It’s Jess who breaks the silence once again.

“So. You walked up to me earlier, walked away, and then walked back. What was that?”

Right. “Uh… well, truth be known, we’re trained in passive stealth and I’ve never accidentally snuck up on anyone before. Actually, never been alone with anyone but Captain Phasma before. I realized too late and didn’t want to scare you and get off on the wrong foot, so I left and came back louder, hoping you’d notice me.”

“That’s a lot of thought to put into a simple hello, Aces.”

Finn nods. He knows, but he doesn’t really know how to stop it.

“That’s alright. A lot of us got out quirks, it’s what war does to people. Next time, at least with me? Don’t worry about it. Be as sneaky as you are.”

He’s not really sure what to say to that. “Oh. Uh. Thanks, Jess.”

“No problem, Aces. Friends?”

“Friends?” Was it… was it really this easy?

“Yeah. I’m not stupid. A mechanic would have known better what to do with that cannon. You’ve been awful alone up in that tree for, what, a month now? You wanna fight the good fight, you gotta have more friends than Dameron. So. Friends?”

“...Friends.”


	5. Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe comes back, Finn makes a new friend and has a good cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, but I have a beta now! So my writing and grammar won't be so shitty! And I'll have real ideas and directions! So! Also, I'm doing some vague googling for some of these details, if you're a hard-core fan and notice some small details about laser cannons or turrets, my bad!
> 
> Huge thanks to Jay for all the emailing back and forth about ideas and checking out my shitty grammar for me! <3

After making friends with Jess, Finn starts coming down for meals more regularly. He actually gets himself into something of a schedule around Black Squadron and realizes that he’d rather missed having a schedule. It helps him remember to get down and eat when he knows where he’s supposed to be and when he knows what to expect. It helps, even though Finn hates to admit he needs anything the First Order put in his head.

Snap is… friendly enough. Finn knows they aren’t really friends, though. The First Order had shallow interactions in spades and he doesn’t miss that that’s what this is. The casual way Snap asks him questions that don’t really matter or don’t even have real answers. The way he clearly isn’t paying attention when Finn answers. It’s casual and for formality’s sake, but they are not friends.

That’s why it’s all the more surprising when Snap finds him late one afternoon, calling up his tree with a voice that’s loud in volume but hesitant in tone. Finn has to lay on his stomach to safely look down at Snap, who’s standing next to a ship part he immediately recognizes.

“Hey, uh, Finn. Aces. Whatever. We salvaged a TIE fighter a few cycles back, hoping we could get some parts off it. Most of it’s useless to us and these guns are broke as a joke. The mechanics want to scrap it all, but, well, I was thinking it could be of use if we could get it up and running again. I don’t know how much you know about its design, but you did a fine job on that KX12. This is a-”

“An Lb-14 turret.” Finn finishes the sentence, eyes on the large gun. The very same kind that sat under him as he and Poe made their break for it. His heart sort of hurts a little at the memory, but that’s not what matters right now. What matters is that he definitely has seen these before and has at least enough know-how to be dangerous if he gets his hands on it.

“Right. Lb-14 dual heavy laser turret. Think you can fix it? And before you say anything, I know this could be a bit- a bit weird for you. A bit rough, I guess. And I get that. If you gotta say no, then you say no. I get that. We gotta look after ourselves first if we wanna be there for anyone else.”

His immediate response is that it doesn’t matter. He wants to be useful and he will be. But Snap’s concerns kind of echo and bounce around for a bit, and Finn realizes he’s not totally sure if he’s ok with this. Genuinely, he doesn’t know. “How about I give it a shot and if it becomes too much, I’ll scrap it and ask for something else?”

This answer seems to appease Snap, who nods assuredly. Apparently feeling confident that Finn knows how to get the turret up into the tree, he walks off without another word. Finn just kinda… hangs out there for a minute, arms dangling over the edge of the tree’s natural platform as he mulls it all over in his mind and lets his sore muscles stretch out.

Salvaged. Probably left behind the bodies of the pilot and gunner. Distantly, he wonders if he knew them. Odds are slim, he didn’t test into the pilot’s program and there was little reason to interact with the TIE pilots outside meal time, which even then was a quiet affair. So what if he does fix this turret? Who will it be used against? The resistance fights the First Order, and the TIE fighter would probably be used for stealth or infiltration, which means troopers would be the first to die. They were always the first to die. It’s why they’re always on the front lines.

Are they innocent? Finn… doesn’t know. Truly doesn’t know. Yeah, many of the troopers have killed perfectly innocent people. Many more only have experience as far as the training simulations. And he knows that they were all raised the same way. They were all brainwashed. Not even brainwashed, that makes it sound so innocent and painless. No, Finn remembers. They were beaten and broken until their wills were not their own. Until they obeyed.

That, he thinks, is why they’re innocent. Even some of the officers, the ones born into power suffered the same indoctrination, the same daily torture. This was not a choice they made, not like Hux or Snoke or Kylo. They simply were by consequence of their circumstances. Finn isn’t fond of the idea of the deaths of people who, in another time or another life, would have been innocent bystanders, or even fought against the First Order. And even though he knows it’s a logistical nightmare, didn’t they all deserve the chance to become deserters like he had done?

These thoughts are going a direction he isn’t comfortable with and he knows he won’t find any answers in the process. So Finn pushes them away and climbs down out of his tree, hooking the turret up to the pulley system he made. He could have those thoughts on another day.

\-------~

Three days later (not that Finn has been timing himself), and the forest echoes with the sound of crashing, snapping wood and crunching metal. It’s distant, somewhat muted as the sounds travel almost lazily through the warm air. By the time they reach Finn’s ears, the cacophony of noises has somewhat dissipated and sounds… almost phased out of reality.

But none of that matters, because Finn knows who it is.

He’d been standing with Snap, lifting the turret back into its chassis and mount, when the sounds first reach the base. He’d finished fixing up the turret that morning, and it wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to be dangerous in a stealth scenario. For the most part, the issue was melted metal cooled somewhere it shouldn’t be. He had a couple burns on his fingers, but for the look of respect Snap had given him? Worth it.

Now, hand still on a button for the jack holding the turret, Finn’s head jerks in the direction of the sounds filtering their way through the forest. Snap is only a little bit slower, and if anything, Finn can tell from the shift of weight that puts Snap’s face in his peripherals that the pilot is a man of action. Finn catches sight of a flock of something flying from the trees, counts the time between them and the sounds coming from the distant forest. More crashing, more crumpling metal that for some reason sounds sickening, and then…

The high _bweep-beep-beep-bewww_ isn’t nearly as sharp from 3 klicks away as it is when it’s right next to your thigh with a taser out. But it’s still recognizable, and not just to Finn. Both men take off running in the direction of the sounds then, turret long forgotten as their feet fall heavy on the tarmac. They’re both pushing themselves, and while other people are running, only two people match their pace. From his left, Finn just barely catches sight of Karé and Jess, straps of their flight suits bouncing around their shoulders and waist as they push themselves as hard as Snap and Finn are.

The four of them converge around where the tarmac runs out and gives way to compact, damp soil and dense foliage. The party gets a bit broken up by the effort to dart over the terrain, but Finn is trained for this. His eyes are always darting between Jess, Karé, Snap, and the origin of the sounds, making sure no one is down, no one is off track. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Snap stumble for a moment, and Finn’s first instinct is to pull back to help him.

The realization slams into him hard enough to bring him to a halt, and for a second, Finn swears he sees white armor and a familiar face where Snap is hurtling towards the ground. All too quickly, there’s a crushing pain in his chest, almost like he’s being sat on, but he knows there’s nothing there, that nothing has really happened to him. It just came out of nowhere. His body is angled toward Snap, but before Finn can get his feet in gear again, Snap is up and yelling at him again.

“ _FINN,_ , GO!”

It’s the name that gets his feet working before his brain. Or maybe it’s the panic he hears there, so different from what any trooper was allowed to sound like when communicating with their unit. It doesn’t matter, he’s moving again as the sounds grow louder, closer.

The running seems to last forever, he wonders; how loud can the sounds get? They haven’t heard BB-8 since the sound that sent them running and that has Finn’s heart nearly in his throat. Then, all too suddenly, all sound stops. There’s a silence so fast and full that it feels vacuous to Finn’s very existence, even if he knows that’s not true. Something is thrumming under the surface as all four of them come to a halt, and Finn can’t… can’t deal with that right now. There are more important things, like the plume of smoke weaving through the massive tree trunks.

All four of them move fast and careful through the underbrush. It’s only a few more meters and they see the more distant pieces off cast-off debris from some kind of wreckage. Karé splits off and heads left around the early parts of the wreckage as they approach, and Snap moves to join her. Finn naturally gravitates toward Pava, finding it unwise for any of them to be alone for whatever comes next.

\-------~

Part of a wing, a badly mangled laser cannon, one of the engines. The more they see, the less they believe the ship could have survived. Or, at least, that’s how Finn feels. But they can see the cockpit now, broken off from the long nose of the x-wing they’d passed a few meters back. The very first thing Finn sees is blood splattered on the inside of the hatch. He would think it would be hard to see past that, but he rather suddenly feels almost removed from what’s happening. This a mission with a goal, a way to win and he has to win if he wants to stay in one piece.

Jess knows as well as Finn that they can’t start tearing into the cockpit without making sure the wreckage is structurally sound enough for that much meddling. They start pouring over the ship, looking for anything that could go wrong, but there’s nothing to be found. Finn looks to Jess, gives her a commanding nod, and unhooks the manual latches on the cockpit hatch. Jess goes around what’s left of the nose, gets the other latch, and the two of them swing it up with such force the remains of the hinge snap and toss the hatch fully to the ground.

Finn really doesn’t have that much experience with death.

It makes sense, really, when you think about it. As a trooper, as FN, the most he ever did before Jakku were training simulations. His shots were impeccable, he had well over 90% accuracy and kill-to-shot ratio that was nearly one-to-one. Phasma regularly told his unit to follow his lead. But none of that means Finn really knows what death is. Killing a simulated hostile tells you nothing of what someone really looks like when they’re dead. Finn doesn’t even know quite what it takes to recognize when someone is dead, only knows what it looks like when they stop fighting, stop shooting.

In fact, the only experience with death that Finn really has is Slip. Holding Slip’s dying body on Jakku, feeling little more of his touch than the tilting weight of his helmet, Finn still didn’t know what death looked like. He felt it. Somehow, he felt it when Slip died in his arms, brutalized by a blaster shot. He felt the death of everyone in that forsaken village as his unit fired over and over on people who were defenseless. In simulations, he’s always felt alive with energy, but this is different. There’s a different kind of something he feels on the battlefield and the longer he’s there, the dimmer it gets. The dimmer it got as he held Slip and watched his only friend die.

Then, as it is now, death is something he felt, not something he saw. He looks at Poe, slumped forward over the controls of the battered x-wing, caked in so much blood he barely looks like he has skin left at all, and he knows Poe isn’t gone, feels it. Not yet. But he also feels a sense of doom.

Jess is still staring as Finn moves. He grabs Poe’s flight harness, feels around blindly until he finds the small, guarded blade meant for slicing strapping. It works like a charm, cutting through the synthetic material like butter until Poe’s body slumps forward right into Finn’s waiting arm. From the other side of the cockpit, Jess is carefully helping maneuver his body out of the cockpit toward Finn. Snap and Karé appear then, and Finn can hear them talking to Jess about the best way to extract Poe, but Finn is already working on it, not really hearing them as his hands feel for any kind of breath or pulse or _something_. Snap rounds the nose to help him, supports Poe’s back as he slides fully from the wreckage and into their arms.

“Finn,” he hears (when did his ears start ringing?), “Finn, we have to go. We have to get him to medical ASAP!” Who’s yelling at him? He’s already going, already turning with Poe in his arms back in the direction they came, spine already screaming because this is so much more work than he’s had to do lately, and then-

“FINN!”

His cheek stings and his vision, his focus widens back out, he sees Snap standing there, feels the weight of the pilot’s hands on his shoulders. Snap slapped him? Hey, that rhymes.

“Finn. You can’t carry him alone. Medical can’t be far behind us. We’ll both carry him and meet them on the way. You take his shoulders, support his head, I’ll take his feet and lead. You with me? We got this.”

It’s a plan. Now his mind is clearing up and he has a plan and he can work with that. When did his head get so foggy anyways? But that doesn’t matter now, he nods to Snap and hooks his arms under Poe’s. Carefully, Finn supports his head, which is bleeding so, so much. Too much. Snap has his feet and of course, of course it gets so much easier when there are two people carrying him.

And Snap’s right, it really isn’t that far. They’ve just passed the farthest pieces of the wreckage when a rover rolls up beside them and two medics jump out, relieving Finn and Snap of the burden of Poe’s unconscious weight. There’s no room on the transport for them, and Finn is about to protest when he remembers something very important.

Without another word, he turns and bolts back toward the wreckage. Jess grabs for him, says something about the fuel line being damaged but he doesn’t heed the warning. Phasma’s voice drifts through his mind; you’re being too empathetic, it’s not worth it. But it’s worth it to Poe, so it’s worth it to him.

When Finn finds the little astromech, none of its lights are blinking and there are no whirring sounds or excited chirrups and beeps. Not that Finn knows a damn thing about droids, but it _feels_ like BB-8 is dead. That can be fixed though, can’t it? That’s all that matters.

He has to really work to get BB-8 free. The droid is being held in place by twisted metal clamps and the fire slowly spreading around them is heating the metal to the point where it’s nearly untouchable. Finn feels himself slice his hand as he gets a particularly tough piece twisted away, feels almost like he’s sizzling in the heat of the jungle and heat of the fire combined. Finally, he gets enough free to leverage BB-8 out of the x-wing.

This droid is heavy.

Finn actually isn’t really prepared for how heavy BB-8 is. When he first manages to pry the droid free of the wreckage, he very nearly falls on his ass just from the weight of the thing. It’s not too much, it’s just unexpected. For a minute, Finn struggles to get them up and balanced enough that he can carry BB-8 back with him to base. There’s really no good way to do it and Finn starts to worry about exposed fuel lines, so he books it back to base as fast as he can.

The whole way, the awkward angle and the weight have his back shrieking in pain. It seems to take him twice as long to get back as it did to get to the wreckage and there’s no one else around. _Where did they go?_ But there isn’t much time to meditate on that, not as his boots finally touch down on the tarmac and he figures out _who_ to take the little astromech to. He really has no idea, so he finds a cart to put BB-8 on and then sets out to find Snap.

\-------~

Hours later and Finn barely has enough energy to climb up into his tree. It’s still midday, which is weird because after all that it feels like it should be late at night. He’s not allowed into the medbay to see Poe, and waiting outside with nothing to do was driving him stir crazy. Snap had disappeared with BB-8 not long after Finn found him so he was alone all over again, fear and anxiety finally settling down to be replaced with unbelievable exhaustion. He lays back on the pile of mats and blankets that double as a bed, feeling the painful whine of his muscles, especially around the damage to his spine. He lets out a deep breath, stares up at the many shades of green he still hasn’t figured out how to decipher.

And he starts to cry.

This is unlike anything Finn has ever felt or done before. His eyes have watered, a few tears slipped down when Poe kissed him right before he left. As a small child, pain would make him wail, fear would make him scream, but he learned to shut those down fast. The best troopers didn’t cry, didn’t wail, and Finn was the best.

But this is nothing like any of that. There are a million thoughts on his mind, but he can’t really place which one is doing this do him. Or maybe it’s all of them, sitting like a weight and finally breaking him a little. As he sobs openly into the warm afternoon air, Finn realizes it doesn’t matter why. It just is, and he has no way to stop it.

His sobs only grow louder, the leaves above him becoming shapeless splotches in his vision as tears overwhelm his eyes and stream down his cheeks. In a move he thinks is rather neurotic, Finn rolls onto his side, draws his knees to his chest, feeling too exposed lying flat on his back. His eyes squeeze shut but that doesn’t stop the waterworks. His throat begins to feel scratchy and hoarse and he’s not really sure if he’s screaming or wailing, but he’s making some kind of noise of anguish over and over again.

The force of his crying shakes his abdomen, leaves his muscles jittery and shaky. His wails are broken up by coughs and rolling, gasping breaths in. At one point, he begins to hiccup and he has no idea why, but it just makes the sounds he’s making that much more ridiculous. His mouth is dry, but not the kind of dry he felt in Jakku, dying of thirst. This is somehow tackier, chalky. He doesn’t have the words to describe it, only finds that it gets harder and harder to lick his lips free of tears and snot.

Finn doesn’t know how long he cries, but he loses track of the force of his sobs. It’s almost meditative, how he cries and cries to the point of forgetting. It’s only a few minutes after ceasing his tears entirely that he realizes his tears had been slowing. His face feels oddly tight. He has no idea why that last one happened, but it doesn’t really matter right now. Finn’s never quite cried like this before, not with this much sorrow and now for this long.

Finally, finally, he opens his eyes and looks around. The day still seems the same, though maybe the sun is a little lower. It’s hard to tell as the leaves diffuse the light and it looks nearly like the same time all day until suddenly the light is gone.

Finn takes a moment to breathe deep, then sits up slowly. The skin on the side he was laying on is chilled by the rush of fresh air. Finn gently touches his damp cheek and he can feel soft imprints and creases there, likely from the blanket. He stretches slowly, hands above his head as he arches his back carefully, hearing the tell-tale cracklepop of his spine decompressing. The stretching feels like some last piece he didn’t know he needed because as soon as he’s done, a sense of deep exhaustion settles over him. Or, maybe, that’s not entirely quite right? He’s exhausted, but he also feels… refreshed. Unburdened. In his very core, he feels floaty and light and almost… hollow?

Truth be known, it’s freaking him out a little bit.

Then again, it feels kinda nice. Like a relief he never knew he needed. And maybe that’s exactly what it is. He wonders if that’s a thing, if crying is something normal for people to do that he just didn’t know about? It’s a valid question. In any case, Finn finds he’s actually quite glad for the tears. He feels oddly better, even if he’s still scared for Poe, for his friend and… well, who knows. He’s worried.

A soft whirring beep distracts him from his thoughts. Finn can hardly believe his ears as he hears more small sounds and crawls over to the edge of his tree platform. He looks down, and indeed, there’s BB-8, rolling around at the base of the tree as if the little droid has any chance of getting up there. It’s whirring and beeping… excitedly? Worriedly? He’s still learning binary, he took a break in their absence and now wishes he hadn’t.

“Bee-bee-ate! Stay there, I’ll come down.” Finn calls down, already turning to go down the makeshift ladder he nailed up for himself. The little droid beeps something in response and Finn doesn’t catch it all, but he does understand “Poe” so he moves a little faster. As soon as his feet touch the ground, BB-8 is rolling quick across the damp ground and then the tarmac, with Finn having to jog to catch up.

\-------~


	6. Heal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An important discovery is made, some things are set in motion, and Finn and Poe have a cute chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to J for beta-ing! Had a hard time getting the tone and the scenes quite right, so hopefully, they're not too awful. Chapter 7 will be shorter and cuter and much faster to post! As per usual, pardon any typos, I always sneak em in there.

Laying in the medbay bed, Poe looks so much smaller and paler than Finn could ever recall. His face has scratches and bruises across it. There’s a large bandage around his head holding a bacta patch in place. He’s in some sort of robe not unlike the one Finn had been in, sheets pulled up to his armpits and tucked tight around his body. He’s still asleep, if it can even be called that. Certainly, he doesn’t look at peace (not that Finn had ever known sleep to be peaceful).

On his way in, Doctor Kalonia had tried to explain the situation to him. He hadn’t been able to hear her, mind far too tunnel vision to have room for more information. After a moment or two, he’d had to tell her that he simply couldn’t. He just wanted to see Poe, wait with him until he awoke.

So that’s what he did. Finn grabs a chair, drags it up next to the bed, and takes a seat. As his fingers curl with Poe’s carefully, so carefully, BB-8 rolls up quietly next to him. The small, nearly crunchy sound of the droid’s traction texture on duracrete is the only sign it’s there at all. For a long moment, he looks over all of Poe, eyes flicking aimlessly over his body, which looks broken and tired. Finally, his eyes land on the slow rise and fall of Poe’s chest, and it’s a comfort, Finn finds, to watch it and know he’s alive, he’s breathing on his own. Whatever else could be wrong, it’s a start.

He finds now that the crying, the panicked high from running to the crash and finding Poe, the emotional relief of knowing he was alive, it all exhausts him. With their fingers still twined, Finn folds his other arm with the first on the edge of the bed. As he slouches over and rests his head on his folded forearms, his back begins to ache in protest. Finn ignores it in favor of studying the features of Poe’s face, littered with small cuts under smears of bacta gel. Poe’s nose is a little crooked, and there’s probably a story there. Finn rather wonders what it is.

\------~

_His toes touch down on the bare duracrete floor as he holds Poe’s forearms for support. Just like Finn can feel two versions of himself, he can feel two versions of Poe. The gentle skin, textured with hair, warm under his hands. All of Poe, like a presence his body is acutely aware of, so close to his own they nearly touch, yet in no way physical._

_He feels it now, too, though it seems in a dream. Is he dreaming? Finn’s not actually sure. It doesn’t feel like the nightmares he had as a child, before his sleep became too shallow and regimented to earn dreams at night. No, he feels like he’s somewhere else, away from the medbay bed and stiff chair. He just doesn’t know where._

_Looking around, Finn sees almost nothing at first. It’s shadowed and gray like the dusk on Jakku. The light is low, but it’s still clear to Finn that there’s simply nothing to see. Until, looking down at his own bare feet, he realizes he’s not quite himself. He looks more like a ghost or… or a hologram. Faint and see-through, ever so slightly soft blue. When he walks, it feels effortless and smooth. There’s no thud under his heel, no reverberating impact traveling up his leg and twinging his spine. It’s all very, very strange._

_Without really knowing quite why, he wriggles his toes on the nothingness below his feet. Like roots from a tree, soft paths of light snake out from below his feet and spread impossibly distant in an instant. He can’t see where they’re going, but he feels quite connected to them. Out of curiosity, he takes another step. The little paths vanish and redraw all over again. Odd._

_For a long, long moment, Finn is staring at the roots, for lack of a better term. He’s taking steps in random directions, watching them redraw over and over, and sees that they aren’t random. There are a few, quite distinct in the jagged twists and turns they take on their way from his feet. Five appear much larger than the others, one of them is distinctly the largest. Finn’s so caught up in watching them take root over and over that he nearly misses the largest one pulsing softly._

_Finn stares at it for a beat, watches it pulse, and feels the urge to follow it. This time, when he takes a step, the roots stay firm where he last stood. He can’t help but feel he’s being lead this way on purpose, and there’s nothing else to do here, so he follows. Really, he’s not actually sure how long he follows for, this place seems timeless. Or rather, time doesn’t exist here to pass. His sense is entirely internal._

_Finally, in the distance, he thinks he sees something. He feels like he sees something at the very least. Realizing there’s no energy expended, Finn breaks into a run, the smoothest run he’s known in his life. The figure starts growing rapidly closer, Finn’s eyes keen on it the entire time as he tries to decipher what he’s looking at. When he finally recognizes the familiar features, he stops short, feeling no different than before, not even a tightness in his chest from his shock._

_It’s Poe._

_Finn takes off running again and before he can really realize it, he’s standing right before a haunting version of Poe. The pilot looks just like he does, but he’s not… awake. He’s beginning to understand, or at least get ideas as to what might be going on. Poe’s head is level but his eyes are closed and the longer Finn looks, the more he can see faintly glowing areas of his apparition. Looking down, it’s much more obvious and Finn wonders quite how he missed it, until he looks back and sees that seemingly Poe’s whole head is glowing. It’s soft, barely more than the soft blue of his form, but definitely there now that Finn sees how much paler the rest of him is._

_What could it mean?_

_Feeling confused and lost, Finn reaches for Poe’s hand. He doesn’t actually expect to be able to touch it, in his mind he figured their forms would behave like actual holograms. Instead, Poe’s hand settles in his and lifts easily, not even the resistance of heavy muscles as Finn brings the hand to his lips and kisses it softly._

_“I wish I knew what was happening to us. I wish you were really here.”_

_There’s a small glowing cut on the back of Poe’s hand. Finn rubs his thumb over it, wishing for all the world that it didn’t exist, that Poe felt no pain even here, wherever they were. He doesn’t know how long he strokes it, watching the rhythmic back and forth of his thumb, until suddenly Finn notices the glow is gone. Truly and completely gone._

\-------~

In the medbay, BB-8 whirs softly with alarm when it notices a soft, golden glow where Finn’s hand is joined with Poe’s. Finn hasn’t moved in quite some time, but BB-8 doesn’t read any signs of sleep coming from the human. It gives a louder whir and a couple of cautious beep-whizzes, but neither human stirs. What is wrong with them! They are both usually so responsive to its sounds!

Displeased at the silence of both men and the consistent glow between them, BB-8 zips off quickly in search of someone to alert.

\-------~

_While he doesn’t quite understand what happened, he’s no fool, either. Finn quickly finds another glowing cut on Poe’s arm and presses his hand over it, wishing more than anything that it would be healed, that Poe wouldn’t have to suffer. A moment later, he checks under his hand and the cut is still there, but it’s smaller, shorter. He puts his hand back, tries to pour actual effort into willing the cut away, and this time when he checks, it’s gone._

_One point is data, two points is a line. Three points is a pattern._

_Finn looks at the glow of Poe’s head, so much more vague than a cut or scar. He wonders what it means, but he doesn’t care to wait and ponder it. He’s no fool, there’s no reason any of this should be real, it must be a dream but even in a dream Finn wants Poe to be well._

_They’re the same height, so Finn finds it easy to frame Poe’s face in his hands and bow his head, pressing his lips carefully to his forehead. He cradles the pilot against him, one hand wrapping around the back of his neck as Finn closes his eyes and enjoys the closeness, fake though it is. Again, he puts real effort into wishing Poe well again; imagining them standing in the tree before Poe’s mission. The small kiss they shared. The heavy, toxic weight sitting in Finn’s stomach as Poe left. The fear._

_Justified, as it turned out._

_But what does any of it matter if Poe isn’t here with him now? He doesn’t know where they stand, but he’d be losing a true friend at the least. He’s not willing to do it again. So Finn puts all his focus into picturing a healthy, happy Poe, into the mending of his bones and flesh. He can very nearly picture it, like a pretend bacta patch, knitting together muscle and sinew and nerve endings and capillaries._

_For the first time, Finn feels something. He feels exhausted, a physical weight on an immaterial form. It strikes him all at once, his attention turning inward in shock and betrayal that now, now as he trying to do something in this barren place, he should grow tired._

\-------~

Some sort of machine in the room is beeping steadily. Finn’s mind singles it out from all the ambient noise of the room and the larger base as his eyes steadily attempt to focus. Poe’s face comes into view and Finn finds himself still staring right at Poe’s nose. What had he been doing again?

For a long moment, Finn studies that familiar face again, finds details even he hadn’t seen before. His brain is trying to catch up to what’s going on. He remembers looking at Poe’s face, but he feels so much more exhausted than he recalls being when he’d come into the medical bay. Perhaps he fell asleep, but he doesn’t have that lingering tiredness or tacky eye goop that would hint at such a thing. However, when he looks at the clock on the wall, there’s more than a few minutes missing time.

He would worry about it more, but he doesn’t get the chance. BB-8 rolls in (when had it left?) and appears to be leading Doctor Kalonia and General Organa. Both women look alarmed and Finn lifts his head, giving them each an equally confused expression. “Is something wrong?”

“Beebee-ate came to find us, Finn. It said you were… glowing?” Kalonia approaches slowly, a holopad in hand. She turns her attention to the various devices and monitors hooked up to Poe. For several seconds, her face is entirely neutral, but then quite suddenly, her expression changes to one of deep confusion.

“Finn?”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Did you do anything to Poe?”

Finn’s brows furrow, confusion evident on his face. “What? No! Of course not. I don’t want to risk hurting him, all I did was hold his hand. Why? What’s wrong?”

As Kalonia reads the machine, General Organa approaches slowly. Finn doesn’t understand the expression on her face as she looks over Kalonia’s shoulder, so he files away a note to himself that he might talk to her later. Everyone sits in tense silence as Kalonia checks the reading of the machine again, pulls out something from her pocket Finn recognizes as a general scanner, and then checks the machine again.

“This is so strange. I could have sworn when he came in that he had a brain hemorrhage. I was waiting on service for another machine to confirm, but it seems whatever was there is gone now. His brain is fine. At the very least he should have a concussion but it seems that even that is gone.”

“What does that mean?” Finn sits up, still holding Poe’s hand. He’s worried and curious, having noticed the bandage wrapped around his head. Kalonia carefully checks under the bandage, revealing a large split in his skin with bacta gel smeared over it.

“Well, he hit his head pretty hard somewhere along the way. Hard enough to split the skin on his forehead from the force. That should have been enough damage to give him a concussion at the least, but my scanner isn’t reading anything. It’s getting the cut, though, so I know it’s not broken. This is so strange. I’m sorry Finn, but I may need to ask you to leave while I run a few more tests just to be on the safe side. Brain hemorrhages don’t just disappear.”

Of course, his gut response is to fight to stay. He doesn’t want to leave Poe behind, but General Organa is giving him a look that says he shouldn’t stay, shouldn’t even argue. With Kalonia, he might have, but he still respects the General’s authority as it is here and he won’t disobey her stern gaze. Finn nods, giving Poe’s hand a squeeze and then standing to follow her out, BB-8 hot on their heels.

\-------~

“Finn, I have news.”

They’re standing in General Organa’s office. She’s looking out the transparisteel window, her back to him as she watches her patchwork militia scurry around the tarmac, working on x-wings and astromechs and who knows what else. She’s not looking at him, which upsets Finn’s stomach a little, leaves his chest feeling tight. She is unreadable to him and he has no idea where this is going.

After a moment of waiting for his response and receiving none, she continues. “We have official word from Luke and Rey that they will be returning shortly. It’s a long journey as some of the previous route is now being patrolled by the First Order, but… we should see them soon. When that time comes, I’m going to ask Luke to train you, too.”

Finn is silent for perhaps too long. The idea is rolling over in his mind, of learning with Luke Skywalker of all people how to control the powers he’s only just beginning to understand. But then he thinks about every time he’s seen or heard of the Force. It’s a deadly weapon you learn how to wield against other people. Finn isn’t against weapons, per se, but he’s already spent his life _becoming_ one. The Resistance is different from the First Order, Finn knows that, but he doesn’t trust any of this yet. He’s not part of this place, he’s still an odd outsider trying to decide if he even wants to be part of this war. His concern is for Rey, for Poe, for all the other troopers he trained with who were kids taken just like him. If Luke teaches him to weaponize himself, is the expectation that he stays and fights for them? It’s one thing to be a body consuming a few resources. It’s another to become indebted so soon after finding his freedom. But what does he say? This isn’t exactly the time for introspection.

“… Thank you, ma’am.”

“I sense something is concerning you, Finn. My brother is not the only of us who’s Force sensitive, you know. I hoped you might be excited, but it feels there may be more going on in that brain of yours.”

Well, now he feels called out. Leia turns to look at him and Finn averts his gaze to the floor. Still, he can feel her looking at him, the weight of it nearly palpable. He’s not timid, but rather quiet and reserved. “Permission to speak frankly, ma’am?”

He doesn’t realize she’s standing in front of him until her hand settles on his shoulder. “It’s safe to assume you can always speak frankly, Finn.” They both know he’ll always ask, though.

“I’ve been someone’s weapon, ma’am. I don’t want to repeat that. Not to say that I don’t believe in what you’re doing here, because I do, but… I didn’t leave the Order just to join another fight I have no stake in. I left for what I believed was right and that’s always going to be the path that I follow. The Force is a weapon and I don’t want to learn how to wield it against anyone.”

Having spoken honestly, Finn is afraid of Leia’s reaction. He isn’t aware how openly this displays on his face, doesn’t see the flicker of sadness in Leia’s own gaze as she notices. She says nothing to him, only removing her hand and taking a step back.

“I understand. If anyone has a right to forge their own path, it’s you. However, the Force isn’t just about being a weapon, Finn. It’s understanding to connect with and control a part of you, just like walking. It doesn’t have to be violent and you don’t have to study with Luke. I just figured you might find his guidance more useful than not. As always the choice is yours. You’re dismissed, but before you go, I have a few old holopads I found laying around. I heard from a select few pilots that you were getting your hands on as many as you could. You might find these to be valuable reading.”

As Finn looks up, the General goes to her desk, opening a drawer and pulling out a small stack of holopads. He moves to take them from her outstretched hand, tucking them under his arm. “Thank you, ma’am. I always like a bit of light reading. And… thank you for understanding.” Again, Finn isn’t aware how openly his emotion shows on his face, doesn’t understand the softening look in the General’s eyes as he nods once and leaves.

\-------~

Of course, he goes right back to Poe’s bed in the medbay. All his monitors are blinking and beeping steadily, though Finn notices there are a few less than before. He sets the holopads on the bedside table and takes the seat again, gently clasping Poe’s hand in both of his own. This time, though, he doesn’t get the chance to study Poe’s face. The little muscles that make his smile so bright, that give his eyes that knowing look, start to twitch and move. Of course the first face he makes isn’t a good one, brows drawn over his tightly squeezed eyes and mouth pulled into a grimace. Finn wishes he could put a happy look there. He doesn’t understand a lot of the facial expressions he sees on base, but it’s always clear to him when Poe is happy.

And then, Poe’s eyes open. Finn holds his breath, sitting up in his seat as he watches like a sentry. At first, Poe’s gaze is straight ahead, and then his face changes but Finn doesn’t understand the new look. Finally, Poe flexes his fingers, turns his eyes toward Finn and…

...smiles.

Not just a smile, but a big and toothy grin. It’s infectious and Finn smiles right back. For a long second, they just smile at each other, Finn resisting jumping up to hug him. Then Poe clears his throat.

“Hey buddy.” His voice sounds rough and tired and Finn immediately doesn’t like it. “Little bit of role reversal, huh? What happened?”

“You crashed a little ways from the base. I thought you’d died when I first saw the cockpit, there was blood everywhere. What happened, Poe? You’ve been gone for ages. You went off on your mission and then lost contact. Everyone was sure you weren’t coming back.”

That famed smile fades just a little, leaving Finn wondering if his line of questioning was too direct. Kalonia says you’ll be fine, though. Just a little time getting patched up. After that crash… stars, Poe, it’s amazing you’re not more hurt.”

He’s been trying very hard to keep emotion from his voice so far, but toward the end, Finn starts to fail. He has to remind himself that everything can’t be a report, he’s allowed to have a reaction. After all, he cares about Poe, and nearly lost him. It’s okay to be worried.

Poe seems to sense Finn’s nervousness, squeezes the hand Finn is holding in both his own. The smile is a little more Poe, a little cocky and bright if not a bit tired. Some tension drains from Finn’s shoulders that he didn’t quite realize he was holding and finally, he smiles back, eyes feeling a little wet.

“Crashed, huh? Guess I don’t remember that part quite yet. You found me? How many times are you gonna be my hero, Finn? I think this makes four!”

That helps, Finn feels a little lighter after that, even if Poe’s wrong. “Just two.”

“Listen to you, ‘just two’! By my count, it’s Finalizer, finishing my mission, Starkiller base, and now. That’s four, buddy.”

“You have a funny definition of hero, but I guess I’ll take it.” Finn wipes quickly at his eyes with one hand, determined to keep it together. Now that Poe’s awake, it’s starting to hit him just how long he’s been gone. More than half the time Finn has known him, now that he thinks about it. How can he have missed someone for longer than he knew him? People disappeared all the time when Finn was a trooper, it had never bothered him this much. Than again, the thought of comparing Poe to them… absurd.

“Not gonna cry on me now, are you? This is the best you’ve seen me in weeks! I’m awake, patching up, safe. It’s all up from here, right? You don’t need to worry. Couple days, it’ll be like I was never gone. We’ll be back running on caf at crazy hours and everything. Bet your tree looks way different now, right? And where’s my astromech?”

Finn has nearly forgotten about the little droid, not used to it being so quiet, but BB-8 pipes up almost as soon as Poe mentions it. Little whirs and beeps start up in a flurry and Finn scoots to the side enough for the BB unit to roll up. The top of its “head” just barely reaches the edge of the bed and Finn carefully lets go of Poe’s hand as the pilot reaches to pet his droid. It’s kinda weirdly cute, the way the little orange and white ball scoots up under Poe’s hand and lets out a little mechanical whir. For a moment, there’s a comfortable silence that befalls the room as Poe looks down at his little friend and smiles, genuinely happy to have the company of his droid. BB-8 breaks the silence when it apparently feels there’s been enough and starts beeping and vocalizing excitedly. Finn catches almost none of it and suddenly feels guilty for not putting more effort into learning binary in preparation for their return.

In response, Poe giggles softly, clearly tired. “I missed you too, buddy!”

Finn thinks it’s a little dramatic for a day or two at most, but then he quickly realizes… wherever Poe and BB-8 had been, they might not have been together. It makes a little more sense, when he thinks of it that way. The thought makes him sit back, more willing to let the two have their moment as BB-8 chirps and chatters excitedly. He’s not paying much attention, though he does catch his name once or twice.

It takes a moment, but Finn finally looks back at Poe, catches the pilot watching him with a soft look. Finn smiles right back and squirms a little under the attention. “What?”

“I missed you both.”

The little whir is the only thing that alerts Finn to the fact that the astromech is now also looking at him. There’s a silence that falls over the three of them and Finn feels distinctly at the center of it. His arms cross against his chest, closing off his body language somewhat as he feels increasingly nervous at the facial expressions Poe is making that he just can’t read yet. “I missed you, too, Poe.”

When Finn finally braves looking at Poe proper, their eyes meet and Finn can barely catch his breath. It’s that expression again, the one Finn can never quite figure out, even when he tries reaching out with the Force, what little he can. He tries to remember the last time he saw that look. It was months ago now, on Poe’s face right before they-

“Finn… right before I left…” And now that look has switched to a rather nervous one. It’s kinda cute, Finn decides, and he smiles right back. Poe clears his throat, tries again. “Before I left, in that tree of yours… we- I- … we kissed. Or I kissed you, I guess. I know it’s been a long time and I bet everyone on base has your number, but if your feelings haven’t changed- I mean, I know it’s war and maybe the timing is sort of weird but you know- we’ve just got so much to do, Finn, and I-”

This is it. Finn has no idea where this is going, but people stumbling over words has always meant an error of some kind, shame. So Finn feels pretty sure Poe is going to tell him it was a mistake, that they needed to focus from now on. He can do that, as long as Poe is back and they’re still friends. It wouldn’t even be that hard! Finn doesn’t really know what he’d be missing out on, so at least he won’t get hurt when Poe says it was a mistake, asks for space.

“I told myself I was gonna wait for the war to be over. I saw what it did to my dad, losing my mom in a dogfight. I wouldn’t wanna suffer that and even worse, I don’t wanna put anyone through that. But then, you know, here we are and I think I kinda put you through that anyway. So why wait? I care about you and I feel like you care about me and I- I’d like to try the two of us being together.”

It’s not what Finn was expecting. There’s a moment where Poe is clearly waiting for Finn to say something and Finn is still trying to figure out what to say. He’s grinning, that’s for sure. There’s a huge smile on his face as it sinks in, what Poe said. It doesn’t even matter that he doesn’t really know what it means, what it will be like. Just the idea is exciting!

“You and me? I- you know I don’t know what it means, but I feel like I want to be closer to you. Like I want more of you. After this… I’m glad to have you back, but I wondered what we were going to be when you got back.”

“We can be whatever you want, Finn. Who says we have to play by the rules? You and I are pretty good at breaking em, actually.” It’s said with a soft giggle. This is the Poe that Finn knew, the one he missed. He just had to remember that everything else he would heal from. His Poe would be back in no time.

“I like that. We’ll just… see how it goes, I guess?”

Poe nods and Finn is still smiling. The silence falls between them again, but it doesn’t feel like either of them need to speak. Finn takes Poe’s hand again, the two of them looking at each other and enjoying being back together.

\-------~


	7. Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five times Poe Dameron avoided the conversation and the one time he didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to J for beta-ing! I, uh... man I really overshot this it's way longer than every other chapter so far but I promise it's worth it! Got some FinnPoe going on, a little NSFW, a little heartbreak, a little joy. Good shit. Hope y'all like it.

Under his fingertips, Finn can almost feel the gridded texture of the woven fabric. Looking at it is like looking at the leaves. In theory, it’s orange. It’s all one color of orange. But the longer he looks at it, the more shades, whole new colors he sees. There’s orange, sure. But there’s also a sort of peach, something rather bleached out. There’s an ugly brown from an old blood stain that wasn’t quite washed out. There’s even oil smudges all over. Finn knows the color can’t possibly be actual orange, but his brain is still seeing orange under the black smears and gray grime.

As the flight suit gets distance from him, it all becomes one color of orange once more. It sits in a cargo box with a few other things, the orange changing once more as Finn closes the lid and casts a long shadow that eventually envelops the clothes entirely. The box gets shoved under the bunk he never uses. If Poe asks, Finn will tell him where his flight suit and favorite tools are, but Finn would much rather Poe take some time off. They only just got him back and Finn is more than ready to give it a few more days before Poe tries to get airborne again. Still, it sits rotten in his stomach to take away something he knows is so important to his favorite pilot.

It’s been a couple days since Poe woke from the coma. Finn has spent almost the entire time by his side, chatting and laughing with him, watching old holovids of Poe’s. They even watch a couple Leia suggested about the Jedi and the old Republic. Poe watches starry-eyed, but all Finn can see are a lot of questionable rules and strict adherence to authority, which isn’t really his bag anymore.

Now, Poe has been cleared to leave the medbay. The bacta did its work, all his wounds are more or less healed except for a few pink scars here and there. Poe looks about ready to bolt, getting fidgety and staring out the window to the tarmac. Leia ushers Finn out and has a long chat with Poe right before he’s released, and then suddenly Finn gets to see him again in regular clothes. No flight suit, no jacket, not even work boots. Just wooly socks.

\-------~

That night, Finn digs up just about every pillow he can find around base that isn’t claimed or on someone’s bunk. He’s surprised how many pillows that actually is by the end of the day, all piled up on Poe’s bunk with a couple extra blankets. They enjoyed the holovids so much they thought they’d do a rerun of their favorites, make new memories away from the medbay (they have too many memories there anyways).

Poe comes back from his official debriefing and finds Finn curled up in a mess of pillows, already watching something. He doesn’t realize his brows are furrowed until he looks up and sees Poe and smiles, sitting up in greeting. There’s a look on Poe’s face and it’s that one Finn just… just doesn’t get yet. He’s determined to figure it out someday but for now he’s happy to let Poe make faces at him if it means they get to watch holovids together.

It takes some shifting and fidgeting to get comfortable. Finn wants to lean on Poe but he’s being a bit overprotective, not wanting to hurt the pilot he just got back. After lots of insistence on Poe’s part, Finn finally relaxes and they end up leaning on each other and a few pillows, eyes growing tired as holovids play on for hours, one after the other. Most of them are action adventure types and Finn loves them, loves watching people fight to save their worlds. They see so many different characters, but at the end of the day, they all fight for what they believe is best and Finn… really loves seeing that, seeing how good everyone thinks it is. Nothing like he’s ever seen in the First Order.

And then a different kind of holovid comes on. Most of them have had some sort of romance, but it’s usually short and feels kinda throwaway and Finn pays it no mind. But this one… this one, the romance is the focus. The tone is totally different and it’s all about these two people and their relationship. Most of it flies over his head. He doesn’t understand why they fight, sometimes yells at the holopad because it would be so much easier if they would just talk to each other! The little acts of affection that make them forgive each other feel alien, too. It’s hard for him to truly get invested until the end. The two characters have kissed before on screen, but the final kiss feels different. Finn watches, eyes glued to the screen as the music swells and the camera zooms in and the shot is all about this moment where they kiss.

His throat feels a little dry, like he’s got a lump in it. He wants to know what a moment that intense feels like in real life. Is it like when Poe kissed him, up in the tree? Maybe, though he gets the sense that moment had a lot more sadness in it than this one. A lot more regret. Regret he still has a little of, for not doing something sooner about how he felt about Poe.

Now that he thinks about it, attention diverting from the movie, Finn… feels a lot of regret. All that time waiting for Poe to return, unsure if he ever would, all while wondering where they stood. Finn hated the uncertainty when Poe was gone, and while it felt lesser now than it did then, nothing quite feels settled yet.

From where he’s leaning into Poe’s side, Finn looks up to sneak a look at his face. The action doesn’t immediately draw attention, which gives Finn a moment to observe. Poe’s face, unguarded like this, is quite nice to look at. Not that wasn’t already true, but the relaxed features of his face leave him looking peaceful, smooth the wrinkles from his brow. Finn very much wants to reach up and kiss him, but as he starts to move, Poe turns to look at him. Those wrinkles are back, face shifting to confusion.

“Need something, buddy?”

His courage in this moment sticks high in his chest, burning tight and leaving him a bit anxious and reserved in the moment. This is new to him. This whole world, everything about it, down to the minute things like facial expressions Finn still can’t quite get, it’s all so very new. He’s seen things here that ring true of the First Order, had experiences that feel familiar, but this is something so personal and, in his experience, driven by fear.

So rather than try to kiss Poe like he might have once done Slip- quick, rushed, a bit desperate -he decides to ask a question.

“What are we doing?”

“We’re enjoying each other’s company.” But Poe looks a tad confused, sounds like he’s not quite sure of the answer.

“No, I mean- you know. What are we doing? What does this mean for us?” He’s not even certain what answer he’s looking for, doesn’t know how far-reaching he even wants the question to be.

And Poe, Poe deflects rather inelegantly. “It means we’re enjoying each other’s company. I like you, I like watching holovids, I like watching holovids with you. Does it have to mean more than that?”

Finn doesn’t suppose it does, although he wonders if it should.

\-------~

There’s a sore spot just behind each knee, probably from the edge of the cargo box he’s sitting on. Poe has agreed not to get airborne yet, but he’s compromised by working on an old x-wing and retrofitting parts, getting it up to flying. His old one is wrecked, after all. So Finn is sitting on a cargo box in the hangar because it’s raining out and the x-wing isn’t ready to move out on the tarmac, listening to Poe and Kare chatter idly about… well he’s not sure, he’s not actually listening.

“Finn?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re staring, buddy.” Poe sits up on his heels, wiping his hands on his orange jumpsuit. So many different colors, yet it looks so uniform. What is with that?

“Oh, uh, sorry! Got distracted, is all.”

Except Finn is a trained soldier, he doesn’t get distracted. There was no room for that in the First Order. So what’s wrong with him now? Poe stands, approaching Finn slowly with a careful smile on his face, like he’s worried Finn might bolt.

“You okay, buddy?” Kare is noticeably busy with a wrench suddenly.

It doesn’t even occur to Finn to lie.

“I don’t know?” And that’s the honest truth. He doesn’t know. Everything feels a little off-kilter since Poe got back and he’s really not sure why.

“Oh… do you… wanna talk about it?”

There’s an open, earnest look on Poe’s face and Finn… Finn just trusts it. Trusts _him_.

“Maybe later? You were working on your new x-wing!”

It’s clear from the way Poe furrows his brows that he’s not expecting this answer, but he leans up and gives Finn a quick kiss on the cheek and heads back to working on one of the engines. Finn smiles after him, feeling a touch warmed the kiss to his cheek. Maybe it’s not as bad as he thinks.

After a few hours, Kare makes some sort of excuse to leave. Finn knows it has to do with Jess walking by with her jumpsuit tied around her waist, exposing just her white undershirt. The scene makes him giggle a little, attracting Poe’s attention and leaving them both to discover they’re the last in the hangar. It seemed that later had arrived.

Poe stands again and grabs a rag to wipe off his hands and start putting away tools. It seems he may be done for now and FInn watches as Poe packs up before unbuttoning his jumpsuit and tying it around his waist as Jessika had done. Finn smiles crookedly, enjoying the sight for a number of reasons, not all of them entirely innocent. But Poe, Poe just returns an innocent smile, grabbing his canteen and carefully drinking some water. Not a single drop spills down his jaw, sadly.

“Finn, you’re staring again.”

“So?”

He can see the blush. The way Poe’s eyes dart away for a moment as he takes another swig of water from his canteen. It’s… kinda fun. Finn didn’t really get to flirt openly in the First Order. It wasn’t unheard of, just… well, risky and therefore uncommon.

The shine wears off quickly. Poe doesn’t really respond and it becomes an uncomfortable silence, even if short. Finn clears his throat, trying to decide if he should try flirting again or try talking to Poe again. Maybe he can do both?

“You look good like that.” There’s no way Poe can miss that, right?

“Huh? Oh, thanks, buddy! I mean, I look a mess, but thanks.”

Stars, this is gonna be hard.

“Messy isn’t bad! It works for you. Looks great.”

Poe smiles. Finn thinks maybe he cracked it.

“Thanks, but I gotta change. Meet you for dinner?”

Before Finn can respond, Poe quickly jogs off, escaping the conversation again. Maybe he isn’t being direct enough and Poe’s just not getting that he wants to talk? But it seems odd that Poe would be the one missing social cues. Then again, Snap was pretty oblivious sometimes. Maybe Poe really is just missing what he’s trying to say.

\-------~

The very first time was so slow and halting it almost didn’t happen.

He remembers stilling every few seconds, paranoia at its peak, listening in the silence for any sign he might be caught at all. Of course, at that age it thankfully didn’t take long, but it did nothing to help him sleep better.

In his sort of nest in the tree, the space he carved out for himself, the experience is nearly identical the first time. He wakes up with clear need and realizes he has no schedule, nowhere to be. Maybe he could try something less hasty, less utilitarian. Maybe he could… enjoy himself.

Of course, that time was nerve-wracking. No one could see him, he knew, but the anxiety was real. Still comfortable in his makeshift bed, Finn had kept a blanket over himself that time, bit his lip and muted himself with practiced ease.

Over time, it got easier. It wasn’t exactly a common occurrence, less so than it had been in the First Order. His worry for Poe and Rey apparently had gotten to him somewhat. Now that Poe was back, though… it was getting more common. And not in the morning.

Finn had left lunch, intent on getting another broken laser cannon to see if he could fix it for mounting on Poe’s new-old x-wing. On his way out onto the tarmac, he sees Poe just… just lift up BB-8. Just pick him right up! The little droid rolls up to Poe with excited whirring and Poe stoops and just. Picks him up.

It occurs to Finn he has no idea how much BB-8 actually weighs. That said, it’s clear from Poe’s arms that it’s an impressive feat, and Finn finds himself caught entirely off guard.

Bolting before Poe can spot him, Finn manages to make his way to his tree to catch a breath, maybe calm down. Except… well sitting still on the worn wood wasn’t making him any calmer. All he could think of was Poe, all he could see in his mind’s eye was the way his pilot just- just lifted up an entire droid.

From high up in the center of his tree, now shielded in part by canopies he’s put up, furnished more with tools and projects and just, just _stuff_ he’s never been allowed to have, it’s quiet. Very quiet. There’s some distant noise from the tarmac, but nothing very noticeable at all. So… why not? Poe isn’t expecting him yet, it’s peaceful and quiet, he’s done it before, and his… interest, it seems, is not dying down.

A breeze slips by and sends a small chill down Finn’s spine. Although, maybe that’s more to do with his fingers grazing his belly as he undoes the button on his pants. There’s no reason to feel shy anymore, but he still does a little, knowing that he’s thinking of Poe. His fingers slip lower, push folds of fabric out of the way, grazing his length through his briefs.

The touch is so light, but it still feels nice. His lower lip is quickly caught by his teeth as his eyes slip shut, letting the openness of the air around him feel less like exposure and more like an embrace. It’s been work, learning to really take his time, but he’s getting there. He doesn’t dive right into the business yet, lets his hand rub over the soft fabric just barely covering him, feels the way it glides over the skin of his cock. The texture is different and nice, even if it doesn’t quite feel like enough to accomplish anything. Kare had let slip over drinks one night that that worked on some people, but Finn hadn’t quite cracked that code yet.

No, he needed to feel himself in his hand, enjoyed the texture of his callouses over impossibly soft skin. Maybe it’s weakness or impatience, but he quickly pushes the briefs out of the way as well and palms himself once more before taking his length in hand. Another shiver down his back, slower this time, definitely not the wind. He leans back, supporting himself with his free hand, head relaxed back, sun warming his face. This feels nice, feels right.

His strokes are slow, nothing too harried, too firm. In his mind’s eye, he remembers Poe tying the sleeves of his jumpsuit around his waist, exposing the damp tank underneath that clings to his frame. In his memory, he follows the line of Poe’s body as he leans against a cargo crate, takes in the almost elegant way he relaxes and drinks water from his canteen. His memory embellishes just a touch, a few drips of water rolling down Poe’s jaw and neck. Finn licks his lips, a small expression of a very real desire.

Almost like flipping channels, he remembers the way Poe’s arms bulged as he lifted BB-8. There’s not really a reason to be so turned on by that imagery as far as Finn knows, but he’s not about to question what he’s apparently attracted to. Poe’s hair is messy and little long, letting Finn see the natural curl and tangle of it as it falls around his face, bounces when he tosses it out of his eyes. This is going an unusual direction for Finn, but his hand speeds up so it’s not exactly bad, is it? And then he remembers Poe’s face in the little private moments Finn sometimes catches him in. The soft look on his face, eyes half lidded as he watches Finn. There’s a sort of warmth Finn feels every time he catches Poe looking at him like that, but now the warmth is decidedly more focused, stealing a small moan from his lips as he lets the image and memory wash over him. The smallest contraction of his abs rocks his hips up into his hand as his memory moves on.

Now he’s remembering leaning against Poe, curled up in blankets as he watches the kiss on that holovid. His heart had felt almost as if it had skipped a beat then, but now Finn thinks he understands the feeling was a different kind of arousal. His cheek and side almost feel warm just as they were leaning against Poe, sinking him a little deeper into what quickly becomes a fantasy. He leans up to kiss Poe, but this time it lingers, just like the first time in the tree. Their lips feel a touch tacky as they just barely pull from the kiss, warm breath gusting over each other’s lips. This isn’t how it went, but Finn’s cock certainly doesn’t mind this conjuring of his imagination.

The sun leaves his face, his arm, his belly, his length feeling warm. It makes it that much easier to imagine going into kiss Poe again, feeling the decided change in tone as Finn pushes closer to Poe, clumsily climbs his way into his lap. The holovids are forgotten in the fantasy entirely, Finn having only eyes for his pilot, for the way his lips slowly redden and swell under long kisses, made sloppy by the clumsy introduction of tongue.

His hand is moving faster now, squeezing a little tighter, thumb slipping over the small dribbles of precum and slicking up his shaft for a smoother glide. His teeth relinquish his lip, mouth gently agape as he pants into the open humid air. His fantasy is getting nicely detailed and he’s not about to stop imagining Poe’s lips on his neck, something he can only imagine and yet loves already. Another small rock of his hips, or was that in the fantasy? He thinks he can feel Poe hard against him, barely contained by his pants, and of course a little heavy petting would lead to this. His imagination is starting to run short, not enough experience with anything quite this intimate and slow to finish fantasizing. So he makes do with things he’s heard whispered from Jessika and Kare and Snap- not that he’s trying to think of them right now.

Finn’s shoulder hurts a little, his back twinging, so he lets himself lay back fully, rucks his shirt up for more sunny warmth on his skin, and that seems to inspire his imagination some. He’s felt Poe’s hands, so rough from working that he can feel almost every ridge, every wrinkle. Perhaps it would tickle against the soft skin of his sides, scratch a little as Poe pushes his shirt up and out of the way. Even in his own imagination, Finn feels a little shy like this before Poe. He wants to do well, wants to be impressive. And even in his imagination, Poe is gentle and supportive, smiling up at Finn, but with a heat Finn knows he must surely be imagining. His pilot has never looked at him like that, not that he knows. He likes it though, likes being the center of Poe’s attention, the focus on that hunger.

Patience be damned, his imagination is running out and he wants to cum before it does. Poe’s hands slide up his back, arch his chest closer so Poe’s lips and kiss across his skin until he stops at one nipple. This is one of those things Finn has heard of but doesn’t fully understand how lips would feel different from fingers. Still, he tries, his free hand slowly pinching and rolling the tender bundle of nerves between rough fingertips. He’d like to think Poe’s lips would be soft, but this has to do.

The more he imagines, the more he recognizes that familiar tight coil low in his gut. He makes an active effort now, hand moving swift over the length of his cock, hips gently rocking up into the thrusts almost involuntarily. Poe’s hands slip down under the hem of his pants, grip his ass, and this is whole new territory, a whole other question Finn hasn’t even begun to deliberate. Poe’s fingers wander and Finn just goes with it, rides the sudden spark of excitement at the implication right into a fast, easy orgasm. He’s so lax and warm that he barely feels himself splatter against his own belly. After a few more strokes that leave him sensitive and breathless, his hand falls away. That was… quite nice.

“FINN?”

His back sings as he sits up too fast. Poe’s been looking for him apparently and he is in no way presentable.

“UH- JUST A MOMENT! BE RIGHT DOWN!” Finn’s voice cracks a little as he scrabbles for a spare handkerchief or anything he can use to clean himself up. Nothing in sight, he quickly starts licking his fingers clean, a habit learned from quiet time in the bunks.

“I’D RATHER COME UP IF THAT’S ALRIGHT?”

Stars, he really needed a cloth!

“JUST A MINUTE!”

“EVERYTHING ALRIGHT?”

“YEAH, JUST- JUST CLEANING UP!” Which is hard when he’s both yelling and trying to lick his fingers clean and wipe up all the cum he can find.

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, YOU’VE SEEN MY PLACE! IT’S A MESS!”

It really is. Finn organized it while he was away and was amazed at how quickly Poe’s quarters had become a mess again.

Finally, he gets himself cleaned up enough and tucked away. He’s still a little sticky under his shirt, so he quickly wipes off the last of the mess on his stomach and wipes in on the back of his thigh. Hopefully Poe doesn’t notice. Finn scrambles over and lets his little pullied swing down, watching Poe strap in and pull himself up. He looks just a bit winded when he gets up there, even if he’s smiling.

“This never makes you tired?”

“What are you talking about? I just saw you lift up BB-8.”

“You just- Finn, I am way heavier than BB-8. This ain’t easy! Not as easy as you make it look, at least.”

There’s a hint of a smirk as Poe steps away from the makeshift lift toward Finn. It actually puts them in pretty close proximity, but Finn doesn’t back away. His mind is still a little in the gutter, thinking all those lovely thoughts about what movie night could have been.

“Sorry for the false expectations?”

“You don’t need to be sorry, Finn. What were you doing up here anyway?”

Kriff. “Meditating.” Good cover!

Except Poe raises his eyebrows. “Meditating? Since when do you meditate?”

Right. Poe’s been gone for a while and the meditating was definitely at least partially taken up when Finn was worried, far more worried than he was comfortable with.

“While you were… gone.”

The seemingly flirtatious mood dies rather quickly then, both men looking down and away as the discomfort sets in.

Very quietly, Poe asks. “Do it often?”

Finn answers honestly. “Almost every day.”

They stand in silence for a long moment before Finn clears his throat again.

“So what did you want to come up for?”

“I haven’t been here since I left. Wanted to see it.”

Poe hasn’t been here since that first, sad goodbye kiss. Finn rectifies this and leans in to kiss Poe softly, just a small peck. When he leans back, Poe has a look of wonder on his face.

“What was that?”

“You kissed me goodbye here, I thought I’d welcome you back.”

There’s that blush again, bright across his cheeks and right up to the tips of his ears. Finn grins in response, the meat of his cheeks clouding his peripherals as he smiles harder.

Poe takes a step closer, snakes an arm around Finn’s waist. They’re not quite chest to chest, but by now? Pretty close.

“I missed you, Finn. I thought about you every day.” And then he steals another, slower kiss. Okay, not steal, given how quickly Finn leans into it.

It’s not long, they break apart a second later, but they’re both grinning. Something in Finn feels a little more at ease, something between them feels more relaxed.

“I missed you too, Poe.” _And I thought about you a lot._

“Well I’m here now! And it’s with you.”

 _It is,_ he thinks. “Good. I like being with you.”

And just like that, Poe switches gears. It’s so minute, but Finn can see it, the subtle shift.

“And I like being with you.” But not in the same way, Finn thinks. “Now why don’t you show me what you got set up here?”

\-------~

The last week had been a dream. Poe kisses him often, even when Finn least expects it. Small pecks on the cheek, a few sneaky kisses when the other pilots aren’t working, a kiss to the top of his head as he reads the old holopads Leia gave him over and over. It’s affection and touch unlike Finn has ever known and it leaves him with a near-constant warm, fuzzy feeling.

He can’t stop thinking about his alone time in the tree, though.

In fact, that’s actually what he’s thinking about as he reads a holopad and picks through one of the less appetizing meals he’s had since they got here. Poe dives in for a quick kiss on the cheek and takes his seat across from Finn, fork already going to his mouth as he takes a bit and asks a quick, “s’going on, buddy? Whatchya reading?”

He actually doesn’t remember. His eyes scan the title again. “Mission report by General Tano on mission zw-”

“Whoa whoa whoa, you’re reading mission reports? What’s the homework?”

Finn looks up, brows furrowed. “There is none? Leia- General Organa gave these to me. She said I might find them interesting. It was pretty boring at first but I found these mission files by accident, they’d almost been written over the last time info was loaded on this holopad. Figured I’d read em and see if they were important.”

There’s a very good-natured look on Poe’s face, but he also looks utterly bored. “You’re reading mission files for fun?”

“You know, these are more interesting than you think. This General Tano, I think she was a Jedi during the old Republic.”

“No way!” Poe reaches for the holopad and Finn swats his hand away.

“I’m not done reading!”

“At least read it after lunch?”

“Yeah alright.” Oh no, put away the mission file and look at Poe’s face? Horrible.

For several minutes, they eat and chatter idly, talking about the progress on the new x-wing and the cannons Finn is working on. He was trying to increase the capacity and power of the photon torpedo launchers, give Poe a little more weaponry to work with. The anxious part of him wonders if it’ll save him in the future.

It’s nice, and Finn loves this moment, but it feels… well, without the heat he’d imagined last week, it feels like they’re maybe just friends.

“Poe?”

“Yeah buddy?”

“Are we dating?”

There’s a small noise as Poe coughs around a bite of his food, looks anywhere but at Finn as he wipes his mouth and clears his throat.

“Do you want to be?”

“Were we not doing that before? I thought that’s what we agreed to in the medbay.”

And the pilot is looking more uncomfortable by the second.

“We agreed to see how it goes, not anything concrete. Do you- do you want more?”

“Of course I want more! I spend all my time with you but sometimes it feels like we’re no different than Kare and Jessika.” He absolutely does not understand the look Poe gives him when he says that.

“...so you want more? I mean- what was- how did you- date?”

That’s an easy answer. “We didn’t. But I know I want my first to be with you.”

This isn’t blushing anymore, Poe just looks red. The pilot chews another bite, seems to contemplate in awkward silence.

“...alright, Finn. We’ll- I mean. I’ll show you what a good date is like. A great date! I’ll sweep you off your feet the first time.”

Finn beams and Poe grins right back. It seems settled, though Finn has a feeling something isn’t quite right. He ignores it in favor of enjoying his lunch with his pilot.

\-------~

A couple days later, Finn finds an honest-to-maker note pinned to his makeshift lift at his tree. It just says _Date night! Meet me at 5 by the edge of the tarmac._

Excited and perhaps a little over-eager, Finn goes looking for Poe to ask what they’re going to do. Except, Poe isn’t anywhere to be found. Jess, Kare, Snap, even BB-8 are all tight-lipped, giving vague and yet clearly false answers. It’s a little jarring, watching Jess lie to his face while being acutely aware just how much she’s lying. So he goes back to his tree and settles in to read more of the old mission reports he’d found on the holopad.

After a couple hours, he falls asleep, relaxed and happy in the afternoon sun. By the time he wakes, it’s nearly 4, giving Finn plenty of time to shower and change (Snap picked out some nicer clothes for him, cleaned up some of the stitches on his jacket).

By the time 5 rolls around, Finn is waiting at the edge of the tarmac, fussing with his shirt and feeling quite suddenly nervous. Kare had, shall he say, given him some pointers. Not that Finn expected that much was gonna happen, but the idea had excited him and the excitement had given way to nervousness.

“Of course you beat me here!” Finn spins on his heel and spots Poe approaching, looking freshly shaven in more casual clothes rather than his flightsuit. He’s got a bag slung over his shoulder and flowers in one hand. As he approaches, he offers the flower to Finn with a quick kiss on the cheek.

Almost immediately, Finn can understand why Poe picked these for him. There’s a veritable rainbow of colors, so very many for him to stare at and try to understand. It takes a second to realize just how hard he’s smiling and his voice is entirely sincere when he thanks Poe. The world outside the First Order is saturated with so much beauty and Poe is definitely one of the most beautiful souls.

“So where are we going? What’s with the bag?”

“Well, I thought we’d go on a short walk and have a nice evening picnic. It’ll be special.”

Finn has no idea what that means, but he likes the idea, so he follows Poe into the dense jungle beyond the tarmac.

It truly isn’t far, maybe ten minutes of walking at most. It’s clear when they arrive because they step into an area that actually has a view of the sky beyond the trees. The sky above is a beautiful color of pink, streaked with purple and orange clouds that nearly seem to sparkle. But that’s not the only thing that catches his attention. There are little glass jars and vials everywhere filled with glowing things. Glowing rocks, glowing bugs, glowing plants, a few even look like they might be full of water and fish. Jars of all sizes, hung all over the small clearing, enough to add soft lighting to the green foliage. He’s sure it’ll illuminate more as it gets darker. He’s never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

“Poe… you did all this?”

Looking a bit shy, Poe nods, laying a blanket out on the soft grass and taking a seat. He pats the spot next to him and Finn joins him, feeling a bit of a flush creeping up his cheeks. They’ve been alone before, but this… this feels different.

“I had the guys in the mess hall make us dinner. Don’t tell Jess, she’s begging favors from those guys all the time and she’ll be cranky if she finds out they did it for me but not her.” With that, Poe starts unpacking food containers from the bag and laying them out on the blanket. Finn is at a loss for words.

They pick at the food slowly, talking and taking their time as they eat. The conversation flows easily, talking about all the parts Finn has amassed in his tree, his efforts to learn binary, the couple droids he’s caught following him around the tarmac. Poe talks about the challenges of getting the new x-wing working, the insurmountable mountain of paperwork from his mission. Every time he mentions the mission, Finn feels a twinge of sadness. They still haven’t talked about what happened and he’s starting to wonder if Poe will ever talk about it with him. But that’s not what tonight is for.

Somehow, he finds himself laying back on the blanket, full up on good food and tucked neatly against Poe’s side, head resting on his shoulder as they look up at the stars. Poe is idly pointing out constellations Finn is sure he’ll never remember, listing off little stories and myths about the stars as people across the galaxy see them. It’s so perfectly peaceful, so serene. It’s not the first time Finn has felt happy, but this utter inner peace is so distinct he can’t remember ever feeling this way before.

It therefore feels so natural when he curls toward Poe as the temperature drops and finds himself being kissed softly. Calloused fingers just barely hold his jaw, Poe’s lips soft and slow against his own. It feels so easy to fall into it, kissing back slowly, parting his lips to mirror the other, groaning softly as he experiences kissing like he’s only imagined it. This is so gentle, so caring, nothing like the frenzied pace of his time with the Order.

The way they kiss is so easy, so slow and gentle. For a long time, Finn quite enjoys it, enjoys the play of their lips against one another, plush and warm and a little wet and a little kiss-swollen. Soon, though, Finn has his arm wrapped around Poe’s waist, a familiar heat coiling at his core, wanting more than just kissing. Of course, he doesn’t entirely know how to make that happen, so he just… leans into the next kiss a little more. Remembering what Kare mentioned, he slips his tongue out, gently drags it along Poe’s lower lip, and does not get the reaction he expects.

Poe breaks away, panting a little and smiling crookedly. Finn smiles back, but he’s not sure quite what happened. They both look a touch confused, but Poe doesn’t say anything so Finn doesn’t either. A little panting and silence and Poe seems to relax, diving back in for more kisses. They’re definitely more heated this time, stealing Finn’s breath away as Poe cups the back of his head and teaches him how to kiss with tongue, leading by example. Finn’s fingers find the long curls of Poe’s hair, tangle in locks softer than Finn imagined hair could ever feel, keeping the two of them chest-to-chest as they roll on the blanket.

The change in pace isn’t hard to miss. Finn knows he’s half-hard by now, though he’s not entirely certain Poe has noticed. There seems to be something of an active effort to keep their hips apart, with Poe twisting out of the way every time Finn twists closer. Finn finally manages to throw a leg over Poe’s hip, can feel Poe’s interest, but… well the other pulls away. Poe pulls away enough to sit back on his heels, looking flushed and flustered and mussed up from Finn’s hands all over him. Finn sits up with him, curious as to what he did wrong. He doesn’t get the chance to act.

“It’s getting late and it’s getting cold, we should head back. You alright? Have fun?”

It’s so absurdly sudden that Finn just isn’t quite sure how to react. He just kinda gawks and then nods.

“Uh… yeah. Yes. Lots of fun! Guess you’re right though. We should head back.”

Poe nods once, runs his fingers through his hair and stands. Finn moves with him, and together they pack up in silence, walk back in silence, and part ways for the night with a soft kiss and a quick goodnight. Finn lays awake most of the night wondering where he went wrong.

\-------~

“Did you see Poe this morning?”

“Yeah, dude does _not_ look like he got l-”

“Jess!”

“You know what I mean! You seen Finn yet, Snap?”

“Saw him out on the tarmac this morning, carting some junk parts over to his little treehouse. Wish I had one of those.” He does actually sound a little jealous.

“How’d he look?!”

“Tense.”

Kare narrows her eyes. “So he didn’t get any either…”

“Now you don’t know that! Maybe he had nightmares. Maybe he’s just always tense?”

Snap and Kare both give Jessika an incredulous look.

“Finn?” Snap questions, “Always tense? Please.”

“Yeah Jess! Just because he’s quiet sometimes doesn’t mean he’s always tense. Have you met the guy? He’s great! Snap was gonna show him Mister Bones, see if he’s as fond of Finn as the other droids.”

“Who?”

The three surprised pilots all shout “Finn!” in unison. He makes a sort of noncommittal face at them and sits next to Snap with his lunch, poking some food around the dish.

“So… get any last night?”

“KARE!”

Jess’ outrage makes Finn snicker, but he does look confused.

“Why would I have- it was just a date, you know? A picnic?”

The three pilots exchange glances and Finn suddenly wonders what he’s missing. After what appears to be some non-verbal communication that Finn utterly fails to decipher, Snap takes a drink and clears his throat, then leans closer to Finn.

“So, uh… you know, we all thought-”

“I don’t know why you would-”

“Because Poe said it was your first time and he really wanted to make it special. Sounds like he chickened out.”

“First time? Why would he think it’s my first-” Nope, Finn knows exactly why. He’d never been on a date before. Poe apparently took that to mean he’s never been _with_ anybody before. But if he thought that, why didn’t he go through with it?

“I gotta go. Catch you guys later! And Snap? I gotta meet Mister Bones!” There’s audible grumbling as Finn grabs his tray and books it.

\-------~

When he finds Poe, it’s in his quarters, eating with one hand and filling out data fields on a holopad with the other. He looks up as Finn bursts in, cheek full of food and eyes wide and clueless, fork halfway out of his mouth.

“Do you think I’m a virgin?”

Poe chokes on his food, the fork clattering back to the plate as he thumps his chest and tries to swallow what he didn’t inhale when he gasped.

“....aren’t you?”

“Oh for the love of maker, of course not! Is that why you’ve been avoiding me? I mean, I haven’t done everything but I’ve been with other people. Is inexperience that bad?”

BB-8 whirs to life and wheels over, bumping up against Finn’s leg, entirely unaware of the atmosphere. Poe looks torn between confusion, relief, and guilt. Finn’s just kind of… well, amused is probably the best term.

“Finn, it’s not- I thought you were- I didn’t- can we sit on the bed or something? This might take me a minute.”

The young man moves and sits right on the bed, watching Poe expectantly. Poe just laughs nervously and then stands and moves over to the bunk. He sits next to Finn, their knees brushing, opening his mouth and closing it again as he seems to try to settle on where to start.

“Look, Finn, I didn’t think you were a virgin until last week when we were talking about the date and you said you wanted your first time to be special. I guess I can see now how you meant first date, but I thought… I mean, everything has been so tame so far, I thought for sure you meant… you know… your first time. And you know, I was nervous for that, but I was excited you trusted me with that, but then it felt like something we should talk about and it was all moving so fast and I kinda panicked and packed up.”

It actually makes Finn laugh a little, but there’s a soft unease in his stomach.

“Tame? We were being tame because you seemed to want to keep it tame. Movie nights and lunch together and cuddling. I thought that was all you were interested in. I tried to show you I was interested in more…”

Now Poe is laughing, too. “I’m sorry, Finn! I thought… well I had no idea what it was like in the First Order. I had no idea what your experience was, what you were comfortable with, what you wanted. I didn’t want to push and get it wrong and lose you.”

“Why didn’t you just ask what my experiences were?”

The laughter stops.

“I didn’t want to make you relive that. I thought I could figure it out myself. And I really- I knew I wanted you before I left, but when I got back… stars, Finn, I was so worried I was going to do something wrong and push you away.”

Finn’s own smile fades. His history of intimacy would have been one of the less painful topics. In any case, he would talk to Poe about any of it anyhow. He trusted him. Felt safe with him. But it seems like there’s more than just a fear of loss going on.

“Poe… what happened when you were caught?” The look on Poe’s face tells Finn immediately just how much he doesn’t want to answer and Finn immediately feels back for asking.

“I’m- I-... Finn, I’m not-” Poe takes a deep breath, looking frustrated and tired, “I’m not ready to talk about that yet. Leia’s actually still waiting on my debrief file. I’m just- I’m not ready. But I do know I thought about you every day. I thought about you finding me, I thought about them finding you, I thought about the base blowing up, I thought about, if I were to die, what would you do? And then I thought, that’s insane! You’d be sad but you’d move on. And then I thought… well I want to matter more than that. And I got to come back. I got back here okay, and you were waiting for me, and I thought, ‘this happens once, Poe, now don’t screw this up.’ I never thought I wanted this. I didn’t want to do to anyone what my mom did to my dad when she died, but then… I remember them growing up, Finn, and how happy they were. I remember watching my mom sitting under the tree in our backyard, playing with my dad’s hair. I knew they were in love, I knew it. And I know that’s why it destroyed my dad, but I thought… I’m not gonna live forever but I made it this far and if I can have that with you… I gotta make that happen, Finn. I couldn’t screw that up.”

Poe snuffles, a few tears rolling down his cheeks.

“And then I thought, you know, everything that happened. I’m not- I can’t talk about it yet. And I don’t want to ask that of you if I can’t even do it yet. I can’t imagine what it was like for you, but knowing them, knowing the First Order… stars, I’m a mess and you probably have so much more shit to work through, I’m sorry, Finn.”

It was wishful thinking, Finn realizes, to believe he’d be willing to tell Poe anything. Because yeah, as he thinks of it now; thinks of where to start just on this one thing that would get them to a place of being intimate… Finn’s realizing there’s a lot there he would never want Poe to hear. Never want anyone to hear. Not when he realizes it’s about the emotions, not just the hard facts. Debriefing with the General and Poe when he’d first fled… it was rushed and technical, Finn had been able to remove himself from all of it, recount details of his life like events in a datafile. How it all made him feel hadn’t been a consideration, but feeling Poe’s fear and sadness now, Finn can understand why Poe can’t talk about it yet. If he has to talk about his emotions along with it… there’s so much Finn isn’t ready to express. It makes his stomach hurt, realizing how much harder moving on and moving forward might be.

He reaches for Poe and pulls the other man into a hug, a tight hug that practically squeezes the air from their lungs. His eyes close, because it just… seems easier that way.

“I felt like I’d been cut loose when I found out you went missing. Even before that, I didn’t quite feel grounded. Meditating helped, I think, because sometimes I could talk to Rey, or at least feel her. But this is all so new and everyone seems to expect me to just be okay, move on and start contributing. But I don’t know if I even wanna be here, fighting this fight. I don’t want to trade one regime for another. I know you guys are no First Order, stars no. But I don’t want to kill people who were taken and brainwashed like I was. Aren’t they innocent? Shouldn’t we help them? I don’t know what to do here, and I thought, you know, I’ll just keep moving forward, but…”

Now they’re both crying softly. It feels weird for Finn, but it feels good. Another thing he gets back, another thing he’s allowed, the right to feel anguish.

“It’s so different, Poe. I can do the technical stuff, I can talk about military moves and First Order tech, but it feels like so much is missing. And then you were gone and I didn’t know what I was doing here anymore. No you, no Rey, no anyone. I just waited for you to come back, I waited and I waited and now you’re back and I still feel… untethered. I feel safer, but I still don’t know what I’m doing, let alone what I’m doing here. I just knew I needed you back. I still need you.”

Poe pulls away finally and when they lay eyes on each other, they both choke out laughs at the damn sight they look. He cups Finn’s face in his hands, wipes tears from his cheeks, smiles in a way that is both weak and genuine.

“I love you, Finn. I know war isn’t easy, it hurts even when you win, and I think… I’ve been running from that hurt for a while now, and I think it’s finally catching up with me. With both of us, probably. Admitting it now… Who knows. Maybe it’s catching up with us because we aren’t running quite so hard from it anymore… if that even makes sense…”

It doesn’t, but Finn thinks he gets it. He smiles and holds Poe’s face in his own hands. The tangle of arms and hands and faces and shoulders is clumsy and they both feel messy and sloppy from crying, but Finn can’t imagine being anywhere else.

“I love you, too. I know… I know we’re gonna keep struggling to get this right, but… I want you. I want this with you. We can figure it out together, right?”

Poe snuffles and nods, pulling them closer until their foreheads and noses touch.

“Right.”

\-------~

“Come in.”

“General Organa?”

“Finn, we’ve been over this. You can call me Leia. It’s only General Organa if I get another noise complaint about you.”

She chuckles softly and Finn feels the tips of his ears heat up. He clears his throat and grimaces as she moves from the window to her littered desk.

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

“What can I do for you, Finn?” Her smile is light and good natured, putting Finn at ease. He steps forward and places a holopad on the desk between them.

“Those holopads, ma’am. I found some files from the old Republic, from the Clone Wars? Just a few, they look like they were saved in a hurry but, some of them are from Jedi.”

Leia picks up the holopad and takes a seat, gesturing for Finn to do the same as she powers it up and skims through the files.

“And? What is your question? I’m not sure these are very useful for us, this was… well before even my time, frankly. You can imagine how long ago that was.”

Finn finally cracks a smile for a second, righting himself when he remembers what he was here for.

“I think a couple of these files should be sent to Master Skywalker and Rey, ma’am.”

“And why’s that, Finn?”

“Because they’re about Anakin Skywalker.”

The silence is deafening. Leia seems to have paused, looking intently at the holopad and then back at Finn. She doesn’t sugar-coat it.

“How did you know?”

“Uh… it wasn’t that hard, ma’am. Anakin- Vader, and Master Skywalker share a last name. Your his sister. Anakin is your father.”

“And what does this matter, Finn?”

He clears his throat. “I thought… well ma’am, I thought you both might appreciate the information, but I also had a question?”

Leia is giving him a very intense look, the holopad now on the desk and her attention entirely on him.

“Proceed with caution, Finn.”

“...yes ma’am. Well, uh, it seems a couple of these mission reports are… well, they sound frankly impossible but, from the other reports, I have no reason to doubt General Tano’s word. She says she and Mast- uh, Vader, and another Jedi named Kenobi? She claims they went to a planet that was the point through which the Force flows into the cosmos. There’s… well, I’ll let you read the file, but I wonder… what is the dark side of the Force?”

There seems to be some relief on her face. Finn realizes she was expecting questions about Vader, which he still might yet have. 

“I was hoping you’d find these, Finn. Interesting to read, are they not? It sounds so insane even the Jedi didn’t really believe it. Now, you know, I was never trained in the Force like Luke was but I’ll let you in on a secret; I don’t think there really is a dark side to the Force. Or a light side. At least, not in the Force itself. They may exist as we make them and feed them but, the Force itself is neither good nor bad.”

“But if that’s the case, how did the Sith and the Jedi operate? What about Darth Vader, what about the Son? What about Snoke? And Kylo Ren?”

The General sits back in her seat, eyes on Finn. “We aren’t any of us all good or all bad, Finn. The Jedi, the Sith, they were obsessed with the black and white, with how to have the most power. These are the things that have the potential to corrupt someone. Look at me; I never pursued that path, I was too busy fighting a war and I turned out alright.”

“Why didn’t you send these files to Master Skywalker?” Finn more or less reached these conclusions already, but to hear Leia confirm it was comforting. Still, the burning question was why him, why not Luke?

“My brother… he has his convictions. He’s a very brave, good, accomplished man, but the Force and the waves we make in it have tossed him about most of his life. He’s forgiven evil, watched it flourish before his very eyes, watched how the Force as created by the Jedi and Sith continued to destroy the universe well after they expired. He’s dedicated his life to restoring a balance he feels has been missing for generations. Should I be the one to tell him the effort may very well be wasted? I don’t see how that helps any of us. But you? You might be able to do more with this information, start fresh as you come to understand yourself and the Force as it flows through you.”

She hands the holopad back to Finn. He holds it in his hand, eyes scanning the file but not reading it. A very innocent or perhaps simple question comes to mind.

“Gen- Leia. I… I haven’t meditated or even tried to use the Force in several cycles. I just sort of… well I forgot. I was so taken with everything else-”

“-noise complaints-”

“-noise complaints, yes.” He’s definitely blushing furiously. “Should I… feel guilty?”

Her smile is bright and warm and it relaxes Finn so easily. Just a smile! Imagine that.

“No, Finn. Only you can determine your relationship with the Force. If you needed the time, then you needed the time. I’ve gone months without feeling connected with the Force. We connect with it when we need us, and only you can know how often that will be.”

It’s a relief, honestly. One less thing weighing on his mind, one more thing entirely in his control.

“Thank you, Leia.”

\-------~

The klaxons are loud even in his tree. Finn takes off the magnification lenses he’d been using and stands, moving to the edge of his little hideout to look down at the tarmac. But he doesn’t need to ask, he realizes suddenly. He knows what the klaxons are for and he probably hasn’t moved so fast since Poe’s ship crash-landed well over a month ago.

Running down the tarmac, Finn is joined by Poe jogging in from the left, whooping and nearly tripping over his own boots as he jumps and hollers. They collide in a happy embrace, eyes to the sky as a familiar form emerges from the cloud. Leia arrives at their side, trailed by 3po nattering on about how no one tells him anything.

The wind gusts about them, ruffling their clothes and Poe’s loose curls as the Millenium Falcon finally lands back on home base. Poe pushes Finn toward the ship, gives him a thumbs up as Finn looks back, practically vibrating with excitement. The gangway lowers and Finn moves closer, eyes peeled.

Out of the Falcon like a shot comes a tiny grey blur that collides with him so hard he nearly falls on his ass.

“FINN!”

“REY!”

“YOU’RE HERE!”

They can’t stop saying it! Over and over, they babble on about how happy they are to be here, to be there, to be back. Finn is spinning Rey in circles, ignoring the screaming ache in his back. Finally, finally he sets her down, but then they’re both just jumping about each other and talking over each other with such excitement he’s sure they look like children.

Finn finally realizes there’s other cheering on the tarmac and finally pulls away, breathless as he looks back to the gangway framed by the Falcon’s pluming exhaust ports. He hears Rey and Leia talking in much quieter voices, but for some reason he can’t tear his eyes away from the ship, waiting for the next figure to emerge.

As he descends, his robes flutter around him. Finn catches a glint off the exposed metal of a robotic hand, lets his eyes move up to the hooded figure that finally steps firmly onto the Resistance base. Rey has moved to Finn’s side with Leia stepping forward, ready to greet her brother. However, as Luke Skywalker sheds the hood of his cloak, a silence falls on the crowd, on everyone.

Luke and Finn meet eyes across the distance. The expression on that haggard face, weary and doubtful, now moves to open shock and uncertainty. Rey’s smile fades as she looks to Finn, then Luke, than Leia who appears to be the only one to understand what’s happening.

In the silence, Finn’s footfalls feel disturbingly loud as he takes a few steps forward. Slowly, Finn approaches this stranger, trying to understand just what’s happening. He feels something like an emerging truth, so very deep in his core and yet so abrupt. This man, this soul is so very familiar to him somehow. The closing distance between them feels like a mending wound. He stops only when they find themselves standing a mere few feet apart. Finn’s eyes examine a face that has seen so much pain in life and feels it is somehow a face he’s seen a thousand times. Luke appears to be giving him very much the same look and becomes the first to break the silence.

“Finn. You look so much like your mother.”


	8. Realize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn gets some advice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to Jay for beta-ing and helping me keep the tone right. Anyways this took a bit because I was working on another fic and after that horrible movie just came out there will probably be some fix it fic on its way someday soon. Who knows, I'm trying to commit to finishing this.

Of all people, Finn doesn’t expect to find solace of any kind in Snap. So far, while generally helpful enough, Finn has found Snap rather grouchy and gruff, a bit quiet in a way that says “don’t bug me.” But here he sits, toes tucked against his knees with his legs crossed on the cold duracrete floor, while Snap digs half-way into his engine to get a piece of scrap metal out.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything, Finn.” The sound of his voice is muted and a bit rough, probably from the strain of his reaching into his ship.

“I always wondered who my parents were. I never got to know them- him. I don’t even remember. It means something, right? He’s my father, it has to mean something.”

There’s a soft clop as Snap’s boots hit the ground and the pilot emerges, looking greasy and ruffled. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. Parents are who raise you, not who made you. Did Luke raise you?”

They both know it’s rhetorical question. It leaves Finn a little bitter, wondering what Luke was doing all those years. Did he not know Finn existed? He hadn’t actually thought to ask yet. In fact, he’d barely spoken to Luke in the few days he’d been back. The Jedi master had been whisked away by Leia and only Rey saw him with any regularity. Aside from the ground-shaking revelation his presence had brought, Finn felt no different, not really.

“Besides,” Snap continues after a moment, “parents are overrated. My folks chose the war over me, I grew up on my own and I’m fine. If you don’t want it to mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything. He’s an old man and there’s a world between you. It’s only as important as you make it.”

This is perhaps the most sound advice Finn has gotten so far, but he’s not sure he’s… happy with it. He picks at a spare thread on his pants, letting silence hang between them as he thinks. It takes a good minute or more to look up again.

“How do I make it mean something? What do I do-”

“I don’t know, Aces. Why not get to know the guy? No one knows him, he’s been gone for ages. He’s not a myth, he’s just a man. You know how weird it feels to have everyone whisper about you when you walk past. Treat him like a man. He’s clearly not perfect.”

And that? That makes the most sense. Luke Skywalker has been a mythology with a thousand variations all over base, even in the First Order there were rumblings. Finn’s had time to get over the shock of knowing for certain Luke was real, but it still feels like he’s got parsecs to go to consider him just a man.

Sometimes Finn wonders if his silence is unnerving for Snap because the pilot starts talking again, no longer waiting for a reply.

“Why not ask Poe about all this anyways? Are you and him a thing?”

That’s no secret, but it still makes Finn blush. He does have an answer though.

“Poe has a father. He was really excited for me to get to know Luke, get to know what it’s like to have parents, but I don’t think he understands that you can’t just pick up here. He already joked that Kes could be my dad, and isn’t that… weird? It’s not the same. It’s nice that he’s excited, but his advice isn’t feeling practical.”

Snap nods along, cleaning a transistor with a rag as he listens. Finn’s back is starting to ache and he takes a moment to get to his feet, groaning a little as cold air rushes everywhere that was warm only a second ago.

“So why not try talking to Kes?”

“What?”

“Why not try asking Kes what you should do? He _is_ a dad, he might have some advice for you. You could ask the general, but she seems too close to it, you know? It’s not like there are a lot of dads around you can ask.”

Which is true. It’s war and fathers and mothers are nearly as absent as they are in the First Order. Finn kind of understands, why bring kids into this? They’re defenseless people you can lose very quickly, very easily. Though this is a concern Luke didn’t seem to have, and that thought leaves him bitter.

“Thanks, Snap.”

It’s a canned response, he’s his mind is elsewhere now as he walks away.

\-------~

“You wanna what now?”

“Meet your dad?”

“...why? I mean, I’m glad, he’s a good man and I know he’d love you, but why?”

“I thought… I thought I might ask him about Luke.”

It was hard to just drop the truth in like that, but Finn didn’t want to lie to Poe about it. It helped that he knew Poe called Kes from time to time to chat with him and keep in contact, outside resistance communication. They just had never talked about Finn meeting Kes. Frankly, Finn didn’t understand why it was that important, but he got the sense that it was.

“It’s bugging you that much?”

“I just don’t know what to do about it. I’ve never had a parent, I don’t even know enough about them to know what to expect, or even what to miss. I mean, I knew I had to have them somewhere, but I always thought… I don’t know, it was a vague idea. Not so much ‘I want that’ and more ‘anything but this.’ Does that make sense? I don’t know how to talk to him, what to do. I have so many questions but most of them are angry. The most powerful man in the galaxy didn’t know he had a son? Or he knew and abandoned me? How can I not be angry?”

Poe looks increasingly sad the more Finn talks, but he doesn’t interrupt. Instead, he just hugs Finn, wraps his arms tight around his waist and holds him close. For Finn, close contact like this is something he’s still getting used to, but from Poe? He appreciates it. Especially now, when it calms the spark of anxiety sitting high in his chest. How a hug can do that isn’t clear to him, but he appreciates that it works.

“And what do you think my dad can do about all that?” Poe hasn’t pulled away, his voice is just a little muffled and closer to Finn’s ear.

“Maybe he can answer some of my questions, help me understand what Luke might be thinking when I talk to him. I don’t really know. It’s just a way to gather information.”

“Well, we can give it a shot I guess.”

\-------~

“Pops? Can- can you hear me? It’s a little- there we go!”

Clear on the screen is an older man with a square set jaw and a face rounded by age. His hair is mostly white, peppered grey and black, especially in his beard. There are fanned wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and gentle bags beneath them. Immediately, Finn compares Kes’ face to Luke’s and Leia’s, the only other older humans he knows. The wrinkles around his eyes look like much older versions of what Poe already has and he sees the similarities. Laugh lines, he thinks Poe called them. Something indicative of joy. He doesn’t remember seeing those wrinkles on Luke’s face, but maybe he never looked hard enough.

“There he is, my son!”

Finn is dragged back to the moment, noticing that Kes’ voice is bright but also a bit flat. He sits next to Poe, not really in frame, waiting to be introduced. Poe has an arm low around his waist and it makes him smile just a little, calming the nervousness sitting tight on his breast.

“Hi pops. I wanted to introduce you to Finn! He wanted to chat with you, some big stuff happened recently and I think it might do you both some good to chat.”

“Well don’t delay, Poe! Let’s see this boy I’ve heard so much about.”

Poe reaches up and redirects the camera on the holopad a little, bringing them both into frame. A gentle smile cracks across Kes’ face, teeth a little yellowed and graying around the gums but no less happy to lay eyes on Finn. It’s matched with Finn’s own smile, lingering nervousness put to rest by such a kind face that feels so familiar.

“This is Finn! Finn, this is my dad, Kes Dameron.”

“A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“Oh now, none of this sir nonsense, you can call me Kes. Poe said you wanted to talk?”

Finn swallows, throat feeling thick again. “Yes s- uh, yes. I wanted to ask you a couple questions if that’s okay?”

Kes looks about to say something when Poe awkwardly interjects. “Well, since you two are acquainted, I have to go speak to the general about something. Finn, come find me when you’re done?”

This comes as a total surprise to Finn, but it seems he’s the only one. Kes is looking awkwardly down at his lap and Finn quite suddenly wonders what he stumbled into. Poe gets up, leaving a cold spot next to him and giving him a quick kiss on the temple as he heads out. Finn mutters out a quick “Uh, sure?” before Poe is out the door entirely, leaving Finn alone to chat with a man he’s only just met. He looks back at the screen and clears his throat, scooting closer into frame.

“What was all that about?”

“Oh you know, sometimes kids and their parents don’t always get along so well. We love each other but sometimes Poe wishes I’d retire and I wish he’d quit being such a flyboy.”

Finn can understand that. He feels so strongly for Poe, but he’s certainly worried at how much he seems to take on every responsibility under the stars. That’s not the conversation for now, though, so Finn finds a different thread to pull on.

“I don’t actually know how it is. How much has Poe told you about me?”

“Not much, just that you saved him more than once. I’ve heard rumors around, of course, but I don’t think much gossip gets off base. You’re a stormtrooper, aren’t you?”

“Was. I was a stormtrooper. On Jakku, I saw how the village was being destroyed, I saw Poe-” he stops himself there, unsure of what to say in front of Kes, “-I made a choice. I didn’t want to be what I was raised to be.”

There’s a surety in Finn’s voice and he finds that his words double as a reaffirmation of his choice. He’s been feeling so listless lately, but it’s nothing compared to how the very ground dropped out from under him on Jakku. The absolute stunning awareness of the world around him and the choice he had to change it. Listless he may be, but at least he’s not in free fall.

“It’s a hard thing to do, young man.”

“You’re telling me.” It’s a joke, a bit of lightness in a conversation that already feels very heavy. They both smile for a moment.

“So. A young soldier then. If you have questions about being a rebel, there are far better people to ask, Finn. Poe and I, we’ve seen our fair share of service, but Leia… now there’s a woman with experience.”

And Finn is so very aware. He often thinks to ask Leia what her younger years were like. The rebellion years are something of a mystery to him, his only knowledge tainted by the First Order. That’s something that’s hard to broach, let alone with someone he respects so deeply. Especially a woman like Leia, the loss he knows she’s felt. He clears his throat again.

“No, sir.” He gets a mildly amused look from Kes and feels his cheeks heat up. Oops. “Not about that, I- … it’s not about that. I was wondering… what was it like, being a father? What did that mean for you, for your relationship with him?”

“These are odd questions to ask Finn. No-” Kes interrupts him as he opens his mouth to apologize, “-no no, don’t be sorry. I just want to know where this is coming from.”

Which is strange for Finn. He knows he should probably keep it something of a secret. News of this may already be traveling, but Finn isn’t keen on everyone else forming an opinion before he does. So he decides he’ll try to be secretive, as best he can, for now.

“I found my father recently. In the First Order, most of us are taken as children and raised to be dispensable foot soldiers. I never knew my parents, I never had any parental figures. And now, this man is in my life and everyone is acting like it’s a big deal but if it is, I don’t get it. I’ve always wondered about my family, but having him here now… I don’t know what to expect.”

Kes wastes no time, something that Finn appreciates. “You will not have a relationship with this man like I have with Poe. It will never be the same. Parents of any kind, adopted or born, mothers or fathers or others, they are there to guide you through the questions life poses to you. What is good, what is bad. When you are lost, how do you find your way home. When you are angry or scared, do you act on these feelings or aim for something different. Parents teach and guide and provide. You have already lost so much of that. Without the slow agony of time to create that relationship, to be taught those things, you will never have a relationship with your father like the one you dreamed as a child.”

The words come so fast and they hit Finn like a punch to the gut. His eyes fall away from the screen and he leans forward, head in his hands as he hears the words over and over. _They are there to guide you._ Perhaps it’s just now dawning on him the breadth of what he missed being raised in the First Order. Kes doesn’t make it sound like parents give orders, commands. He makes it sound like they give advice you could take or leave at any time. Advice certainly Poe has often chosen not to heed. But he’s realizing that Poe’s resistance comes from years of knowing his father, of learning the way he thinks and the way he feels. Finn had, at best, gotten to know Slip in that way. Now, he has no one he knows so well. Once again, he feels as though the floor has fallen out from under him and he’s not sure how to recover the conversation.

“At least no one had to try and defend my virtue.” Stars, Finn, this is Poe’s _dad!_

“Finn?” It follows a soft chuckle.

“Yes sir?” He doesn’t look up, tries not to feel bad about that awful joke.

“It’s not hopeless. You’re not the first to reconnect with a parent late in life and you won’t be the last. You _can_ have a relationship with this man if that’s what you want, but it will be different from the kind of relationship I have with Poe, or any parent with the child they raised. I can’t really help you with the difference as I’m fairly certain I don’t have a long lost child- hang on.”

Finn finally looks up, trying to get his feet under him and back into the conversation. Kes looks contemplative for a moment.

“Well now maybe I can help. Do you know if your father abandoned you or are you two learning of each other for the first time?”

“I don’t know, actually. He said I looked like my mother, but that doesn’t prove one way or the other, I don’t think. I’ve thought about it, that he knew, but I didn’t want to believe it.” Because Luke knowing and yet leaving him lost within the machinations of the First Order? Finn would be hard-pressed to find forgiveness in his heart.

“I see. Well, I suppose I could tell you how I would feel if I just found out I had a son. I can tell you what it’s like being Poe’s father. Maybe a different perspective will help you empathize and form your own opinion.”

“That’s exactly what I was hoping for.” He’s beginning to understand why Poe joked that Kes could be his father. It’s such a kind face looking at him now, Finn can see how earnestly Kes means what he says. He wants to help, he wants to find the right words. It’s so genuine and Finn is caught a tad off guard by it.

Kes smiles back at him and for a moment, they both smile at each other. There’s such a warm kindness in Kes’ eyes and it makes Finn feel comfortable, safe in this strange and difficult conversation. It lasts even as Kes breaks the silence and starts speaking again.

“I imagine I would feel some shock to know I had another son, especially one as handsome as you. But the shock isn’t what would hurt. It’s knowing what I missed. I would imagine all the times you scraped a knee and I wasn’t there to bandage it for you. The times you were afraid of something in the closet and I couldn’t leave the light on for you. The times I would have to fight you because you didn’t like the rules I gave you to make you safe. I would miss these things, not because I want them, but because I would feel immense sadness that you didn’t have someone there to care for you. Even if you did, that I wasn’t there to make sure you were loved. So I suppose, my frustration and sadness would come from worry for you, not knowing how you grew up, not knowing that you were safe. As parents, the better ones at least, we want very much to protect our children. To learn that they might be hurt because we weren’t there is the hardest knowledge to have. Children deserve love and as a parent, it’s very hard to trust anyone will love them the way you do. To have missed that… I would be very heartbroken indeed. And I think, first things first, I would want to know where I could start making up for it.”

All of these things are nothing like Finn had. He can’t even imagine what a parent would have been like. But he knows deeply what it is to long for one when young and afraid of the cruel world around you. How different would his life have been if Luke had found him, had saved him? Had raised him? But then he considers what it must feel for Luke, too. The failures in his life that weigh so heavily on his shoulders and Finn is another. Not himself a failure, but someone Luke has failed. And Finn has said nothing to him. Does Luke think Finn is angry at him? Does Luke think he felt abandoned? Left behind? If Kes is right and these are the fears Luke is having, then Finn’s silence on the matter certainly isn’t helping.

Finn doesn’t need to know more. He knows where to start, and he has to start _now._

“Mister Dameron- Kes- sir- I think that’s all I need for now. I should- I should really go find him and talk to him. Thank you for everything.”

“Of course! And Finn?”

“Yes sir?”

“Good luck.”

\-------~

Paneled walls pass in a blur and Finn doesn’t know where he’s going, but it very quickly starts to feel like he does. He’s moving with purpose that he can’t exactly claim, feet thudding softly on the hard floors as he all but runs through the maze of the resistance base. _Left, right, straight, don’t stop to talk to Pava who is giving you a weird look, right, right, through the doors, though the mess half, left, right three more times, and then out onto the tarmac._ Not the active tarmac, he notices, but the side with all the ships waiting to be scrapped or repaired. Damaged property no one has time for just yet. It looks barren and sad, now that he stares at it. Things clearly hauled away and left behind with barely a thought.

In the distance, on the nose of an x-wing missing two engines and a chunk of wing, is a grey hooded figure. Finn feels drawn forth by what he’s coming to learn is probably the Force, as if pulled by his sternum to confront this. But Finn won’t be dragged unwitting into this. He resists the pull and stops, takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders. Every moment since he fled has been something new, some new struggle to find his place in all this. This feels so deeply important and he refuses to float through as he has everything else. No more tripping his way downhill. He has a sense of purpose in this instance.

Stepping forward, everything feels so much more collected. He isn’t trembling, isn’t panting ever so slightly from the rush to get here. His nerves don’t feel alight, his chest doesn’t feel too tight. He’s calm. He’s sure. He’s approaching the nose of the ship and remembers the last days on D’Qar, hanging out on noses of ships while he watched everyone move. He understands the serenity of it, but he suspects Luke gets something more from his perch that Finn doesn’t yet understand.

“Luke?”

“Finn.”

They speak over each other.

Finn stands there, neck craned back as he looks up, but he has a better idea. Another ship is right nearby, nearly nose to nose with the one Luke is on. So Finn bodily pulls himself up, using the engine air intakes as handholds. It feels good to challenge himself like this. In a moment, he’s sitting face to face with his father.

“I’m not angry.”

Luke finally looks at him, eyes opening and face turning away from the filtered sunlight coming down in rays through the leaves.

“I’m not. I’m not angry, or upset, or sad. I’m just confused. I don’t know what this means. I always wanted parents when I was a kid, that hole has always been there, but it feels bigger now even though you’re here. And I don’t get that.”

“Finn-”

But he has more to say.

“And I know- I hope you didn’t abandon me. I don’t remember, I was too little. If I knew you left me behind, I’d be angry, but it doesn’t _feel_ like that’s what happened. I feel like I know we just didn’t know about each other. I knew I had to have family, but I didn’t know about _you._ You were a myth we learned about in training. Most of us didn’t even think you were real. And now you’re here and I don’t even know where to begin.”

“I didn’t know. About you. Even on our way here I didn’t really know. I had this feeling that something was going to change, but I never thought-”

“-that it would be me.”

“I can’t believe she never told me. I was busy, but I wasn’t too busy for this. For you and her.”

“So you knew my mother?”

“Of course I knew her, Finn. And you look so much like her. Especially in the eyes. Not so much the shape, but the way you look when you’re thinking about something, concentrating. Just like her.”

Finn is realizing very quickly he’s not ready for this part of the conversation. His eyes sting a little to imagine for real that he even had a mother. A real person. Not just an abstract concept he thought about as he cried silently in his bunk. Someone out there who was _missing_ him. 

“Did you never suspect? It never even occurred to you?”

There’s an uneasiness in Luke’s eyes. He looks away briefly and Finn notices he’s struggling to keep eye contact. He himself tries not to be so direct, tries to relax the years of training to look directly at the visor, at the eyes.

“Once, I did. For a very brief time. I was convinced at first. I went looking for you. Well, not you, but I chased the feeling I had that there was someone out there I needed to find. The longer I looked, the more I thought I knew what I was looking for. But I thought, it’s impossible! The timing just didn’t make sense, I thought there was no way. I’d thought about it before, I wanted it, but Leia and Han already had Ben and I was building the academy and I figured I would never have time, never find the right person. I convinced myself I was chasing an old dream so I put it to bed and I- I stopped looking.”

So it is as Finn feared. Perhaps not as bad, and he knows he can’t judge Luke for not spending a lifetime looking, but it still hurts. How close had Luke come to finding him, only to leave him in the clutches of the First Order?

“But you knew my mother. Didn’t you know? How could you not know I existed?”

Luke chuckles and it feels out of place, or at least it does to Finn. “Your mother was… not exactly a stationary person. The short time I got with her was an adventure in itself.”

It’s not nearly enough information. Finn has a thousand questions, his mind alight with curiosity, but Luke holds up a hand.

“Finn… I hope you can forgive me, but I’m not ready to talk about her. To know that she had you and never told me… do you understand?”

“I think I do. It tooks me days to get this far, anyways. But you’ll tell me as soon as you’re ready to talk about her? Maybe I- maybe _we_ could find her someday.” But there’s a weight in his chest that he doesn’t trust, a disbelief in his own words. Luke’s face is steady, unreadable. There’s only so much of this he can take, so he pushes those feelings right back down with everything else he can’t quite crack into yet.

Between them is a too-long moment of silence, one that Finn breaks.

“So happens now?”

“Well I think we’d get to know one another, don’t you? I can’t just… become a father, Finn. I think we both know that won’t really work. But I’d like to get to know you. After all Rey’s told me… well, and Leia. I wanted to get to know you anyway. Besides, I hear you need training.”


	9. Busy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn has a lot to do around base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically it's still 2017 where I am so here's a happy new year's ya heathens!
> 
> As always, thanks to Jay for being my beta. This is... a longer chapter, I think technically the longest so far in page length. Ends on a high note and I'm already gearing up for chapter 10. Might retitle this work because saying "here's the next chapter of The Next Chapters" was really a bonehead move on my part. Honestly.
> 
> Edit: There, better title (I think). Also the chapters have titles now, we'll see how long that lasts.

He’s started counting the days again. Eight days after Rey and Luke landed is when Finn finally spoke to the man. Two days after that is when Finn finds him in the mess hall and says he wants to learn, but for now he only wants to train once, maybe twice a week. Another week after that is their first lesson.

It’s all meditating.

There’s an odd feeling Finn can’t put his finger on, a tension that isn’t usually there when he meditates, but it’s not coming from him. By now, meditating has gotten quite easy for Finn. He breathes like the physical therapist taught him for coping with pain, way back when his back still hurt with any regularity. It centers him, focuses him, relaxes him so deeply that the world fades and he could swear he’s somehow on another plane. Of course it’s his brain imagining things, but it feels so tangible in such an unreal way. It’s hard to describe, even to himself.

But something intervenes like static on a comm. Finn peeks an eye open and catches Luke staring at him. Was he doing something wrong? But neither man says anything and Finn goes back to meditating. Soon, he catches himself back in that baren void that feels so familiar yet so unreal, notices a soft pulsing of light in the ground beneath his feet, but then suddenly there’s that static again. This time, he knows exactly who it is.

“Am I doing something wrong?” Finn is looking directly at Luke, a little exasperated.

“What? No, no of course not.”

“Really? Because it feels like you’re watching me because I’m doing something wrong.”

And then this conversation goes in a direction Finn absolutely does not expect. Luke looks worried, the worry quickly changes to fear and concern, and he reaches a hand out to gently touch Finn’s shoulder. Finn has no clue where this level of anxiety is coming from until Luke speaks.

“Oh. Finn, you’re not- it’s okay. You’re not doing anything wrong, you’re still learning. I know it might feel strange, I’m not sure how you learned when- you know, it’s okay to mess up. There’s nothing wrong with that! It’s still learning, you don’t have to be perfect on the first try.”

There’s an awkward beat, Luke watching Finn with far too much kindness and compassion in his gentle eyes than the situation really dictates. It takes him a second to process why Luke sounds so- so _weird._ He knows he doesn’t have to be perfect on the first try, that’s why he was asking what he was doing wrong, so he could learn. Instead, he gets… whatever this is.

But he catches on quickly when he replays Luke’s words in his head. He scoffs, eyebrows scrunching, expression somewhere between befuddled and amused as realization dawns on him. Luke seems to pick it up quick, retracting his hand and sitting back.

“I know that face, Leia used to make it at me all the time. Didn’t quite hit the mark, did I?”

“Listen, I- I appreciate the thought but you are so far off the mark.” Finn relaxes into an easy smile. “Maybe some things are hard sometimes, but I’m not walking around always afraid I’ll miss an order or let people down. I hated getting orders, especially orders I didn’t agree with. I just wanted to know why you were staring at me! I’ve meditated before, but I thought maybe I’d been doing it wrong this whole time and you could teach me how to do it better.”

“Oh!” Luke sits back in the tall grass, bringing his hands to his lap, chuckling softly. “But that’s the thing. You were doing a great job, I could practically feel the serenity coming off you. I think- Finn, I think you express yourself quite… loudly…”

Finn has absolutely no idea what that means. “...Loudly?”

“Like projecting. On Ach-to, when Poe was missing, Rey could feel your sadness all the way across the galaxy. I could feel it, too, though I thought it was bleeding over through her. Now I suspect I was getting it directly from the source.”

“How is that even possible?”

“I’m not really sure. You may be strong in the Force, but you’re untrained. I know sometimes Force users can project their emotions, but it’s usually in the immediate vicinity. Leia did that for a while, before she learned to shield herself. I have no idea how you project so- so loudly.”

There it is, that _word_ again. Finn’s not sure he really likes it, it feels invasive. Like _he’s_ invasive. Perhaps he’s projecting again, because Luke puts a careful hand on his shoulder.

“It’s alright, Finn. It just tells us where to start. Why don’t you try seeing if you can follow your feelings? See if you can feel how far it goes, who it touches. You don’t have to do it right now, just try it when you would normally meditate. How’s that sound?”

He nods a little. “I’ll give it a try.”

\-------~

“FINN!”

He looks across the mess hall, eyes a bit wide at the shock of being called, and spots Rey waving her arms enthusiastically. Next to her is Luke, looking far less enthusiastic but still smiling softly. Well… he was going to eat lunch with the pilots, but they didn’t seem to notice and Poe wasn’t around yet. So he heads over to sit with Rey and Luke, a big grin on his face.

“Finn! How great is this food?!” Rey is so bubbly and happy, her tray a mess of pushed around food being scooped up by torn bits of bread.

“I like it, but sometimes it’s a bit rich for me. Yesterday they had my favorite, that stew? SO good!”

She grins and nods along, taking another huge bite as Luke chuckles and eats far more slowly. He doesn’t seem to have anything to add, but Finn doesn’t mind. He missed this, missed Rey’s exuberance.

“So, I’ve hardly seen you around! I feel like I keep missing you everywhere I go!” Her tone is light, but Finn can feel the anxiety there, matches it with his own. He really has missed her, but he’s seen so little of her since they got back.

“I know,” he mutters through a bit of food, “I’ve been working. I’ve gotten kinda good at repairing the cannons for the fighters, so I do that a lot.”

“Really? I don’t see you in the hangar with the other pilots or mechanics.”

Finn smiles. “I don’t do it in there. I can’t believe I forgot to show you my tree!”

The look on her face is one of utter shock and confusion. “You have a tree?!”

“Yes! I practically live up there now. I’ll show you!” Finn throws a glance at Luke. It feels like he should offer, even if he really only wants Rey and Poe up there. “Do you wanna see it too?”

Luke smiles, but he shakes his head. “My joints aren’t what they used to be and you two have catching up to do. Rey already has the day off, go ahead and take your time.”

Immediately, Rey and Finn are grinning at each other like a pair of fools.

\-------~

There’s an exuberance Finn feels around Rey that he missed. Together, they’re excitable and chipper. It’s easy for him to climb up to his tree, even easier for her. He shows her around, but for a solid minute she just stands there and stares in awe. Once again, he’s forced to see his little space through her eyes, and it looks so very different from the first day he came up here. It looks… lived in. It looks like his space. He loves it, actually. It’s the first space that’s really had his mark on it.

“Finn… this is amazing. This is what you’ve been doing this whole time?”

He moves to stand next to her and looks around, nodding softly. “I spend a lot of time up here. It’s quiet and private and my own. I like it.”

Rey throws an arm over his shoulders and he leans down into it, hugging her close.

“This is so great, Finn. Master Luke had almost nothing on Ach-to and I didn’t have much either. I’m glad you made a space for yourself, it feels way better.” She breaks away to go look around and Finn moves to take a seat, relaxing in the warm, filtered sun. Watching her move around his space feels so easy and natural. He’d almost forgotten how much he missed her.

Rey keeps wandering and a silence falls between them. She starts picking things up, turning them over in her hand as she gets a closer look. It’s a slow disheveling of his space, but he finds it doesn’t bother him as much as he would have suspected.

“So. Master Luke is going to train you. Are you excited? I thought it was pretty boring at first but I think I’m starting to get it. It’s the meditation that kills you, really.”

Of course it would be. Rey came from a life where she was always fighting to survive. Sitting still for any time must feel like agony. Not that Finn didn’t also grow up fighting, but having to stand watch for cycles on end? Made meditation feel natural and easy.

“I already meditate a lot, actually. I’m… excited, I guess, but I don’t know what to expect. We didn’t really grow up learning about the Force, all we saw of it later in life was when Kylo threw his tantrums. We learned about Luke, but he was a threat to the galaxy and the Force was his weapon. I don’t want to be someone else’s weapon. I don’t want to be a weapon at all.”

She stops fussing then, crossing the floor in long, meaningful strides in order to sit next to him. He admires that about her, she moves with such purpose through life, with such power, with such _force._ It makes sense she would have the Force. He’s still wondering how he fits in it.

Next to him, Rey throws an arm over his shoulders and draws him close. It’s easy to lean into her, look up at the leaves with her, sure that they’re both appreciating the view that is still so new to their eyes.

“You’re not a weapon, Finn. And learning to use the Force won’t make you one. Surely you must know that by now?”

In theory he does, but the fear is still there, still everpresent.

“What’s the point, Rey? What would I learn? Isn’t the Force meant to be used for fighting? Isn’t that what the Jedi did? Floating things and fighting with lightsabers and mind tricks. Those are all things you use against people, even if some of it sounds cool. And what if he does train me? Does that mean I have to be a Jedi like him? I don’t even know if I wanna follow in his footsteps. I don’t even know what I’m doing here still, or what I’m going to do in the future. It’s a lot to consider and I’ve never had to consider so much before.”

“Oh Finn.” She bumps her head against his and it’s fun, comfortable, easy to smile in return. “You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be. You can learn and if you don’t like it, you can stop learning. You can make use of it for other things. There’s really no telling. How do you know what you want to do with the Force if you don’t even know how it works?”

“But aren’t you learning to fight with it? To fight for the resistance? After that, if you win, what’s left?”

Rey falls quiet at that. They both do. Finn almost expects an answer, but the silence stretches on for several minutes between them. His back starts to ache and he lays back, stares up at the sky. Well, the leaves. She lays next to him, their shoulders brushing, and she twines her fingers in his.

“Haven’t you always dreamed of more? This is the more, Finn. This is our chance. Our lives change from here. After we take down the First Order… we could be teachers, Finn. We could help people. So many people. There’s always evil in the galaxy, always people to help and people to fight. This is how we do it, a scavenger and a rebel. This is how we become more.”

He has to think about it. “I’ve… I’ve never dreamt of more, I just dreamt of different. I wanted to get away but I didn’t have aims beyond that. We could be more, but who would we be, Rey? I don’t know that I want to spend my whole life fighting, but what else am I good at? Why would we train others like us if not to fight? What’s the _point_ of it all?”

“I don’t know, Finn. I don’t have those answers. But what else can you do? Nothing, and go nowhere? It’s another path you can take and if you want, you can walk back. So why not try it?”

He supposes she’s right.

\-------~

“Set cannon to 15 by 30.”

“Set.”

“Confirm target.”

“Target confirmed.”

“Fire when ready.”

“Firing at full power.”

Finn squeezes the trigger on the joystick and the target on the far tree shatters into a million pieces of wood, the tree behind it taking enough of a hit to set the whole thing swaying dangerously. Finn and Snap both stare in awe, charred wood and a plume of smoke climbing into the air. There’s a resounding silence following the ricochet sound of the cannon fire. Soon, however, they realize the tree could very well come down on them. They book it as fast as they can, only stopping when they hear distant crashing. As they turn to look back, a slew of small animals flood from the forest and onto the tarmac, the tree crunching its way through the branches of all those behind it. At least it didn’t fall on the tarmac. Still.

As he stares, worry sitting in his stomach, Snap whoops and claps his shoulder hard.

“Aces you sonuvabitch look at that! We gotta show the General, she’s gonna have you modding every cannon on the godsdamned base!”

The excitement bleeds over and Finn cracks a grin, turning to look at Snap and his excited face. He feels proud, but to hear it from Snap, who is usually so reserved, is even better.

“You’re sure she won’t be pissed we just felled an entire tree?”

“Stars no! Having four of those strapped to every x-wing in the fleet? You don’t know how that stacks the odds for us, Finn. This is incredible!”

\-------~

Snap was right. Leia, though miffed at the damage to the tree, was more than encouraging of Finn to fix up and mod several more of the laser cannons. She even asked him to show the other mechanics what he’d done so they could replicate the results, which was a tricky task given that he’d mostly messed around with it and didn’t actually know all too well quite what he did.

So now he’s standing at a heavy work table in the hangar, part of a circle of other work tables, trying to be slow and clear about what he’s doing as he tries to feel his way through the repair and modding process again. Four other mechanics are watching him, constantly asking questions, and while he doesn’t mind helping, it’s hard to answer questions he doesn’t consciously know the answer to. On top of it all, he’s supposed to train with Luke in less than an hour and he’s not sure he’ll be done by then, he’s not sure which is more important. His eyes are on his datapad watching the time, he can tell he’s moving too fast, causing frustration in the other mechanics.

Warm arms slip around his waist and it’s as good an excuse as any to take a break from the disgruntled, frustrated feelings of the other mechanics. Is there a hint of disgust in there? He can feel their emotions so plainly and it’s becoming truly tiring. Poe, though, is happy and loving behind him, a counter to the drain of the others. Like a nice emotional battery pack.

“Okay everyone, let’s call that good for today. Hit lunch, we’ll get back at it tomorrow.”

There’s some grumbling, but everyone is quick to disperse, not even putting their tools away. The only one who doesn’t seem entirely pissy with him is a young woman with short black hair in a high ponytail. She’s been excited and eager the whole time, but even she is finding this experience frustrating, Finn can tell.

When they’re all dispersed, he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and turns around in Poe’s embrace, only to be greeted with a quick kiss. The public affection is still very strange to him, but he’s not exactly complaining. It just always catches him by surprise, makes his cheeks heat up. There’s anxiety there as well, so he and Poe have agreed to places that are safe, and the hangar with the pilots and mechanics is one of them. Knowing there are no prying eyes, Finn relaxes and leans in for another quick kiss, feeling bold, his arms embracing Poe.

“Well that’s a fine greeting. Getting cheeky I see. Good day?” Poe’s voice is teasing and light, but he is seriously trying to gauge where Finn’s at. It’s appreciated.

“Frustrating. It’s the same thing, I don’t really know what I did unless I do it again and they can’t follow because I focus too much and quit talking. I’m supposed to go train with Luke in less than an hour and I haven’t made as much progress with these cannons as I wanted. I guess I needed the pick-me-up.”

“Well how about a real pick-me-up to go with it. Let’s grab some grub, BB-8 is running diagnostics on Black One’s engine to check for inefficiency and I can’t do anything until it’s done. Lunch is open by now, we might even get prime cut.”

Finn knows that’s a joke. Everything has been gruel lately as they wait for a new food shipment. Still better than anything the first order gave him, but there aren’t exactly options. Even so, it makes him laugh and smile, because things are easy and comfortable with Poe.

“Alright. Lunch sounds great.”

\-------~

It’s dark by the time Finn finally gets back to his tree. They missed dinner, too focused on trying to teach Finn how to shield himself against the emotional output of others. Luke had kept telling him he was doing a good job, but Finn could feel worry, sadness, exhaustion. Ultimately, he had no tools to make tomorrow any easier, and that’s really what he needed.

Finn climbs up to his temporary home and sees Poe sitting there, reading something on his holopad. He smiles and Poe looks up at him, smiling right back.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Missed you at dinner, so I came to find you. Seems like it’s gonna be cold tonight, I was thinking maybe you could come stay with me?”

He’s tired. He’s so tired. The day has been an onslaught of emotions and a flurry of activity, hours stretching on and on. Finn doesn’t even remember when he woke up this morning, only that breakfast had barely started in the mess hall. But Poe… the look on his face is earnest and eager, plus Finn misses him. He can’t say no to that face.

“Alright. Lemme grab a ration bar and we can head down.”

“No need, I saved you dinner! It’s in my room, BB-8 is keeping it warm.”

\-------~

After dinner has been eaten (with Poe stealing a few bites here and there), Finn finally finds himself curled up in bed with Poe, blankets drawn up to his shoulders, making him warm and cozy and very, very sleepy. It really has been a long day and he’s more than ready for bed.

A little more shifting and Poe has the lights off, is settling in under the blankets and scooting close to Finn. He leans over to kiss Finn’s nose, slips an arm around his waist, and it makes Finn feel warm and happy all through his chest and belly, right down to his toes. His eyes crack open and he smiles at Poe, who leans in for a proper kiss. It’s soft and brief, but Finn can kinda tell that Poe is angling for more. He doesn’t mind, he likes being curled up close with the pilot and this is way better than sleeping alone after a long day, but…

“Poe. I’m not sure I’m really in the mood tonight. It’s been a long day and I kinda just wanna sleep.”

He can see, maybe feel the flicker of disappointment, but it doesn’t linger. “Hey that’s okay. You’ve been working really hard lately, I don’t blame you. Let’s get some rest, maybe you can sleep in tomorrow.”

Finn yawns and shakes his head, fidgeting as Poe rolls onto his back and draws Finn to him. Poe’s chest is a much better pillow, warm under his cheek. He smells a bit like engine oil, but it’s mingled with something like Poe’s soap and the detergent he uses for his clothes and a bit of sweat. Finn can never quite put his finger on what smells so unique about Poe, but it’s comforting and he likes it anyways.

“I have to wake up early tomorrow. Luke wants to go on a hike to a nearby lake and since I have to train the mechanics again, I can’t be out past lunch. What time does your shift start tomorrow?”

“After lunch.”

“Oh. I guess I’ll see you in the hangar then. We can grab lunch together if I’m back on time?”

“Of course. But let’s get you to sleep. Goodnight, Finn.”

“Goodnight, Poe.”

But there’s a small feeling he can’t get rid of, and he can’t even tell if it’s coming from him or Poe. Regret? Sadness? Longing? Who knows.

\-------~

“Focus, Finn.”

“I’m trying, sir.”

“Please stop calling me that.”

“Sorry.” He still thinks the ‘sir’ out of habit. Irritating habit. There’s a soft sigh next to him, followed by the sound of some shifting.

“Finn, is something wrong? You don’t usually struggle this much.”

He opens his eyes and gently sets down the rocks hesitantly floating around him. Well, some of them. Rey’s still got hers in the air, higher and more steady than his. When she peeks an eye open to look at them, all her rocks fall straight down with a clatter. Luke looks directly at her and she smiles innocently, shrugging a little. Finn can practically feel the ‘oops’ on the tip of her tongue.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says, trying to get Luke’s attention back. “I’m just tired. There’s a lot to do today.”

“That may be true, but you really need to be here in the moment for this to work.”

“I know. I’ll try harder.”

Luke doesn’t seem satisfied with this answer, but Finn can’t exactly figure out why. His comm goes off and a series of beeps and whistles echo across the lake. Finn flips it open to answer.

“Try that again BB, you went too fast.”

This time, the beeps and whistles are comically slow. Still, it does the job and Finn looks startled once he catches on.

“Shoot, it’s almost lunch, I have to get back! I thought BB-8 was gonna ping me earlier.”

He stands up, not really expecting Rey or Luke to follow. He knows they’re training more intensely, knows he’s gonna walk back alone. Rey, however, looks shifty and unfocused.

“Master Luke, can I go with him? I haven’t gotten to see him much, I’ll come right back after we eat! I promise!”

“But I packed us lunch…” Does Luke sound… put out?

Rey looks from Finn to Luke and Finn honestly has no input. It’d be nice to walk with Rey, but he needs to get going. After an awkward pause, Luke gives in.

“Alright. But come right back after lunch! I’ll see you at dinner, Finn.”

“Right. See you at dinner!” Rey is already scrambling to stand next to him and the two of them head off into the woods to get back to base.

\-------~

“So. You’ve been in high demand lately.”

They’re setting a quick pace, Finn worried about getting back on time. He throws a sideways glance at her, smiling a little.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, you know.” She hops over a log to keep up with him, branches and leaves crunching under her feet. “The laser cannons for the x-wings. Training with Luke. Hanging out with Poe in the hangar. Giving intel to Leia. You’re even learning binary! No wonder you can’t focus! You barely even have time for me!”

Her tone is playful and light, but Finn worries that it comes from a place of genuine frustration.

“I barely have time for anything! There’s just a lot to do, and it’s war you know? Of course there’s a lot to do. It won’t be like this forever anyways. Once I get the mechanics trained in modding the cannons, that’s half my day back right there. Then I’ll have all kinds of time for you.”

“Unless something else comes up.” She definitely sounds a little forlorn about it all.

Finn slows his roll and looks at Rey. She’s sweating slightly from the pace, panting as she draws up short next to him. He realizes he’s panting as well, he really has been moving fast since they left. As he looks at her, he realizes it really has been a long time since he’s gotten to sit with her and just. Hang out. They’re in the middle of a war but it seems weird that he hasn’t gotten time with her like the pilots all get with each other. Maybe she’s right.

“I’m sorry, Rey. I’m not used to having so much to do. It’s too bad you weren’t here months ago when Poe was missing. I had almost nothing to do.” But he knows how little it means. The past is the past and his friend is missing him now. He has to do better and the expression on Rey’s face says as much.

“Alright alright. I’ll find more time, maybe we can start sparring so we can spend time together without Luke.”

“You mean like actual training?” She sounds excited, bouncing on her toes a little.

“Yeah! Come to think of it, I haven’t been working out except for physical therapy. You’ll probably kick my ass. And who knows, maybe I can teach you to get better at firing a blaster. Always a handy thing to know”

“Finn! That would be perfect!” Before he knows it, he finds himself with Rey’s arms flung around his neck in a tight hug. It takes him no time to embrace her in return, hands splayed against her back.

This is feeling more and more like a plan. Rey is smiling and chatting excitedly as she pulls away and Finn can’t help but grin in response. She’s so lovely and he’s stricken suddenly by how much he missed her energy.

With a new plan in place, they head off to lunch.

\-------~

By dinner time, Finn still hasn’t seen Poe. Rey was at lunch with him but the mess hall was nearly closed by the time they got there, forcing them to eat out in the hangar, scarfing down their food so Finn was on time to start with the mechanics. He has a little bit easier go of it today, it seems they’ve adjusted their expectations and are more patient when he goes too fast. Two of them are still lost, but two of them seem to be about where Finn is in the demonstration. It leaves him feeling satisfied and a little hopeful.

Now, standing at the end of the serving area with a tray in hand, Finn looks around the mess hall. He doesn’t see the pilots yet, but he does see Luke and Rey with R2 sitting nearby. Since he has no idea where else to sit, he heads over to eat with them. The conversation is light and friendly, Rey talking excitedly about the five rocks she stacked today. Finn is happy for the easy socializing, but a few minutes in he notices the pilots coming in as a pack, Poe among them.

When they’re all through the line, Finn waves them down. There’s not really room at the table, though, now that he looks at it. Jess waves once and shrugs her shoulders, as if to say ‘what can you do?’ They all go to sit at an empty table and Finn frowns a little. Not that they’re to blame, but he did want to sit and catch up. He can’t just leave Rey and Luke hanging, though.

And Poe. Poe was acting weird. He had smiled at Finn, nodded once in acknowledgment, but that was it. Otherwise, he sat with all the pilots and dug into dinner. He thought at least Poe would come over to say hello. Maybe he should do it himself…

“Finn?”

“Hmm?” He turns his attention back to Luke, only just now catching that Rey had fallen entirely silent.

“You’re projecting again. Is something the matter?”

“Sorry. It’s nothing, I can worry about it later.” He turns back to his food, feeling a bit sad for some reason. The conversation doesn’t pick up again and when he looks up, Rey and Luke are both looking at him with sad eyes. They finish the meal in silence.

\-------~

It’s a little too late that Finn realizes he doesn’t actually have express permission to enter Poe’s quarters unannounced. But it should be fine, right? He’s never done it before, he’s not even sure if he’s supposed to know the access code.

Either way, here he is, sitting on Poe’s bunk fiddling with a thread he pulled off his shirt. Why does he feel nervous? It’s silly to feel nervous. It’s just Poe! Poe whom he loves and sees every day. There’s no reason to be nervous! But he still is.

The door hisses open and Poe steps in, a datapad in hand that he’s clearly engrossed it. It takes him a second to see Finn, but when he does look up his face lights up in a smile.

“Finn! Wasn’t expecting you, buddy.”

That nags at Finn for some reason.

“Yeah, I just- it was cold out tonight and I haven’t seen you much lately so I thought I’d drop in and-”

“Finn, you don’t need an excuse. I’m happy just to spend time with you whenever. Besides, I haven’t seen you around much. Kinda missed you, buddy.”

There it is again, that word! It’s bugging Finn but he can’t really put a finger on why. He tries to relax, smiles up at Poe and scoots over to make room for him.

“I was thinking we could watch one of your old holovids? It isn’t too late yet…”

Poe’s still standing there, smiling faintly, but it all feels a little weird. He puts the holopad down, preemptively looking apologetic.

“I actually have an early cycle tomorrow. Sorry, Finn, but I gotta go to bed. Wouldn’t mind some company, though.”

“Oh. Okay. I could sleep now anyways.”

They nod and smile at each other and it feels weird, all of it feels weird. Poe starts stripping out of his flight suit, balling everything up in a pile for laundry. Finn stands to do the same and everything feels mechanical somehow, automated and weird. Poe slips into bed and pulls the covers back for him to join and he does and it’s nice. Poe is warm and comfortable but he’s also clearly tired. He falls asleep quickly, but Finn is awake for a long time after that, staring out the window at the stars and wondering why everything feels so off.

\-------~

For several days, Finn tries to find a balance. There’s always more to do it seems. He’s training a lot more with Luke and Rey, sparring with Rey especially. There’s been a lot of time spent with the mechanics, constantly doing repairs, making things better or as better as can be had. There’s time spent reading the growing stack of holopads Leia manages to slip him. It’s a lot.

“Do you think I’m too busy?” He ducks a swipe of Rey’s staff, swiping her feet out from under her.

“Not too busy to talk while sparring, apparently!” She tries to hop back up, but Finn has her pinned with his staff.

“I’m serious! I feel like I’m doing too much? It just feels like there’s not enough time for everything.”

“But you have time to ask me about this _now_?” She finally squirms away and twists back up onto her feet. They’re both sweating hard and Finn is starting to lose careful control of his breathing.

“It was on my mind!” Rey swipes at him and Finn narrowly manages to block her. She tries kicking at his thigh to throw him off balance, but she does that a lot so he’s ready for it when it comes.

“Well I don’t know! You always seem busy to me, but I always want to see more of you anyways.” This time, she does manage to hook under his knee, sending him down onto his back with a hiss. “Oh!” she shouts, dropping the staff quickly, “oh Finn I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to!”

“No no, that’s what sparring is for.” Even so, it hurts just a little to sit up. “Might call it a day, though.”

“And just when I was winning.” Rey flops down on the mats next to him, handing him a water bottle. They both drink in silence for a long minute, catching their breaths and hydrating.

“So,” she says finally, “you think you’re too busy?”

“I don’t know. It seems like there’s a lot going on.”

“I don’t really know what to tell you, Finn. Just learn to manage your time better? Do less?”

Except he’s not really sure how to do less. It already feels like everything is starting to slip, nothing getting enough of his attention. It’s the first time in his life he’s felt like this, like there’s too much on his plate. He was busy as a trooper, sure, but there was no such thing as free time. Everything was scheduled down to the minute, planned for him by higher powers. The more he took on, the more he sort of expected himself to know how to fill that role. It just wasn’t working. Now that Finn thought about it, the more it seemed nothing was really getting the attention it deserved. Not Poe or Rey or Luke or training or reading or working with the mechanics. Plus he was always tired, felt spread thin. Mornings were early and nights were late and there was a perpetual exhaustion he remembered from harder training as a trooper. Maybe he was doing too much.

“Finn?”

“Hmm?”

“Got a bit lost there did you?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m- I’m pretty tired. Think I’m gonna hit the showers.” He moves to stand, grumbling a little bit at his stiff back.

“Oh! I’ll come with, I need to shower, too! Do you mind if I take a minute to run back for fresh clothes?” She hops right to her feet, light as ever.

“Are you sure you even shower? Don’t you just rub sand under your pits and call it a day?” He teases playfully.

“I absolutely do not!” Rey punches him in the arm and he laughs to mask the fact that it actually kinda hurts. “I take showers like anyone! Are you gonna wait up or not?”

“I’m sure everyone believes that. I have to grab a change of clothes as well, I’ll meet you there.”

\-------~

“So how’s training been going?” Rey has to shout over the spray of water to be heard by Finn in the next stall. He pokes his head out from under the water and grabs the soap.

“Why are you asking, you’ve been there with me the whole time!”

“You mean you haven’t trained outside that? Well how’s it going? Making any progress?”

“Not really? Luke’s been trying to teach me to shield myself but it hasn’t worked yet so far.”

“Well you know, it takes time. How’s getting to know him? That must all be a bit… weird.”

Finn falls silent as he tries to think of a good answer, scrubbing soap into his skin with clinical efficiency and speed.

“I guess it’s not really going anywhere? All my time spent with him has been spent training. I think I learn more about him reading the old files Leia gives me than I do talking to him. It feels like I should be doing this differently, but I don’t really know how.”

“I can’t really help with that,” Rey supplies, a bit sad. “I don’t exactly have experience either.”

“I know.” Finn shuts off the shower and grabs the towel to dry off. Rey tends to take longer, he’s noticed, reveling in the way water feels. “It’s alright. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually.”

Finn’s half dressed by the time Rey steps out in her towel. He hardly cares, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before with other troopers. Individuals showers had been a luxury for officers, never troopers. Rey seems a little shy in front of him though, so he averts his eyes as he pulls on his boots.

“Scar’s healing nicely. Still looks a little puckered but not as bad as it used to.”

“Oh yeah? I can’t see it so I can’t tell. Hardly hurts anymore. I get a twinge from the new vertebra if I accidentally bend the wrong way but I rarely do.” He straightens and pulls on his shirt, tucking it into his pants. They fall silent, the sound of rustling fabric telling him that Rey is getting dressed.

“We’ll get him back for it, you know,” she says finally, “for what he did to you. And to Han.” Her voice isn’t as angry as he’d expect, doesn’t match the passion he knows she has.

“I know, Rey. We’ll make things right.” It’s a promise, a sincere promise to her. Finn feels a hand on his shoulder and looks to see her standing there, still half dressed, a very earnest look on her face.

“We will. Not just for us. For everyone.”

She’s got such conviction in it that Finn finds it somewhat inspiring. She believes so strongly. It’s hard to feel like anything he’s doing is worthwhile what with the slow pace of the war, the First Order crippled by their victory at Starkiller. Everything seems on pause. But Rey… she’s so sure that the time will come and that they’ll triumph when it does. It makes him smile.

There’s a sudden whistle-beep behind him and Finn turns to see Poe and BB-8 standing in the threshold to the showers. Finn was already smiling, but he grins wider to see Poe. It feels like it’s been forever since he’s seen the pilot and Finn feels a very sudden pang of longing in his chest. Quite suddenly, he remembers weeks ago, after Poe had made it back and they were getting comfortable with each other. He misses that intimacy.

“Poe!”

“Hey guys. I didn’t, uh, expect to find you here. What’s- what’s up?”

“We were just showering after practice! We’ve been sparring all morning, figured I’d try not to offend the mechanics today.” Finn smiles again, gaze soft as ever as he looks at Poe. Yet somehow, Poe looks… sad?

“I see. Well, I have to shower before a strategy meeting. I was sure Leia invited you. See you there I guess.”

Without another word, he walks off to a distant shower stall. Finn and Rey exchange looks, the two of them equally confused. Finn doesn’t even remember having a strategy meeting.

\-------~

He missed the strategy meeting.

\-------~

It isn’t until he finally takes some time to himself that Finn realizes he never actually tried the homework Luke gave him. He still has no idea just how far his emotions are bleeding out, how intensely they can be felt by others. So he takes a moment to meditate, try to feel it out.

For a long time, he feels nothing at all. Soon, however, the warm afternoon sun filtered through the canopy layer flushes his skin and soothes him. The sense of tranquility almost clicks him into place and gradually, Finn realizes he’s in that vast, empty plane again. It feels familiar, but he’s so sure he’s never seen it before. He’s not entirely sure where he even is. Under his bare feet are soft vines of light, stretching out endlessly to the horizon. Finn has no idea what it means.

On a whim, he takes a step. The vines stay as they are, which feels wrong, though he can’t say why. He decides to pick a direction and walk, moving at a fast clip as he has no idea how long he’ll be in this place. The ground seems to move almost too fast under his feet, but he hardly notices. Off in the distance, a figure approaches.

The closer he comes, the more he can almost make out what he sees. It appears to be a robed figure, floating off the ground and billowing gently in non-existent wind. Inside the hood is a mask in a neutral expression. It doesn’t move as Finn approaches, staying perfectly still. He circles the figure, but there’s no way to interact with it. It won’t move, he can’t touch it, calling out to it does nothing. It just continues to exist in that spot. After a short while, Finn concludes there’s nothing to be had here, so he moves on.

He walks for a time that seems endless. The figure has long disappeared from view and Finn sees nothing else. It begins to feel pointless and he wonders whether he should wake up. But this feels like more than he’s accomplished in weeks, ending it now seems like admitting defeat after endless struggle. He simply can’t walk away empty-handed.

A voice calls out to him.

_”As determined as ever, I see._

The voice is soft, lilting, deep. It comes from seemingly nowhere, certainly nowhere Finn can see. He looks around, but he knows it’s pointless.

“What else should I be?”

_”Cautious. Your determination will cost you much, as it has many before you. Balance is the key to this life.”_

“And how do I balance it? What’s to say it isn’t balanced already?”

There’s a dry, mirthful laugh that echoes through his ears and into his very bones. _”There is a sadness in you that we feel across the galaxy, beyond it. Your every effort is tempered by your own doubt and it leaves you wanting, aching for more. If you do not find balance, you will collapse under your own desires and fears.”_

A vacuous silence follows and Finn knows, somehow, that the voice is gone. It’s an ominous, strange encounter, one he’ll have to tell Luke about immediately.

Waking from the deep meditative state comes easily somehow. Finn’s eyes blink open and he sighs deeply, looking around and taking in his surroundings. It’s almost dark, he’s sure he’s missed lunch and training the mechanics. He may have even missed dinner. As if on cue, his belly rumbles, urging Finn to get down to the mess hall for food.

\-------~

The hall is empty when Finn finally gets there. The lights are dimmed, the window to the kitchen shuttered. Anyone who would hang out had their own lounges to hang out in. Finn gets a cup of water from the dispenser, a sinking feeling in his stomach, and then sets out to find the pilot’s lounge. There’d almost certainly be something he could snack on there.

\-------~

When he gets inside, Finn can see several pilots lounging on couches or playing cards at tables. It’s not like he hasn’t been here before, but when he enters the room seems almost to cool. He feels unwelcome, which isn’t necessarily a first on base, but it’s unexpected.

He looks around the room and spots Poe sitting at a table with Snap and Kare, smiling softly as they chatter softly, well beyond what Finn could hope to hear. He moves to join them, but he feels a hand on his shoulder. Finn turns and looks over his shoulder, spots Jess smiling in a way that isn’t as gentle or playful as he’s used to.

“Hey Aces. Walk with me.”

For a brief moment, he looks back at Poe, this time getting the sense he’s being studiously ignored. Finn knows when he’s being given the cold shoulder, being the outsider is a feeling he’s all too familiar with. He just never expected that he would get that feeling from the pilots, from Poe of all people, and it leaves his chest and throat tight.

“Yeah. Yeah okay. What’s up?”

She leads them gently out of the pilot’s lounge, a hand on Finn’s shoulder as if to guide them. As if he doesn’t know the way. They meander down the halls and Finn can tell there’s no real direction other than away. What’s going on?

“You know, Finn… I know it must be tough outside whatever your life was. It’s okay to be confused about what you want, about _who_ you want. That’s natural, everyone’s been through it and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re still figuring things out, you gotta let people know. Don’t be getting anyone’s hopes up only to keep looking, you know?”

Finn has absolutely no idea what she’s saying.

“And you know. You didn’t know any better so that’s okay. But maybe just give Poe some space for a bit. He’s a little sore because he’s a sore loser but he’s trying to respect you so just give him some time to adjust. Make sure you know what you want before you come back to it, if you ever do. You know?”

Why is Jess talking like Finn doesn’t want Poe? He knew he’d been sparse lately, but he missed Poe, he wanted him, wanted to be around him. No one made him feel the way Poe did and he didn’t feel about anyone the way he felt about Poe. So what was this about? What was Poe sore about? Why didn’t Poe just _tell_ him?

“But I want Poe,” he blurted out. “I’ve always wanted him. Since day one! Since he looked at me and said ‘we’re doing this’ and then got us off that star destroyer. Why does he want space? Did I do something wrong?”

They stop in the hall, Finn giving Jess an almost desperate look. The looks she returns is patient, but there’s something else there Finn isn’t quite picking up. He doesn’t like it, he’s sick of these looks he can’t quite parse, it makes him feel young and stupid and he’s not, he’s just never had to deal with emotions quite like these before.

“Finn. Maybe you think you want Poe, but you know, you spend a lot of time around Rey. She’s not bad looking, I don’t blame you. Maybe a little dirty but that can be endearing. She’s definitely capable and I can see why you’d want that, the two of you would make a good mechanics team. And it’s okay to want her, but don’t get somebody else’s hopes up in the process. Maybe you don’t know this, but it hurts, y’know? To think someone wants you and then find them spending all their time with someone else. Why not take some time, make sure you know what you really want.”

Except Finn _knows_ what he wants. At least in this. He might be confused about everything else but Poe has been a constant since day one. Yeah, he was stretched thin lately, but it wasn’t because he liked Rey more than Poe that they were spending time together. They were just training. And for Poe to think- and for him to not _say_ anything to Finn-

This wasn’t how he was dealing with this. If Poe felt this way, he and Finn could talk it out directly. Why wouldn’t Poe want to talk it out directly? Well it was too late, because Finn wasn’t about to let his night end this way.

\-------~

It isn’t far so he isn’t breathless by the time he slams the lounge door open. All eyes turn to him and Finn stands fierce in the doorway, looking directly at Poe where he’s playing cards with Snap and Kare. Poe’s eyes snap to him and the pilot seems to shrink and Finn knows he gets the message.

“Poe.”

Finn turns away and leaves, heading back to Poe’s quarters. Behind him, he can hear soft murmuring and scrambling sounds. Another few steps and Finn can sense the presence at his back. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t look back until he’s punching in the code to Poe’s room. In a moment, the door is hissing shut behind them.

“Finn, what-”

“What was that all about?!” Finn rounds on Poe, frustration and anger and sadness all welling to the surface at once.

“What? I-”

“So you just thought- you just thought I was done with you?! And you didn’t say anything to me about it at all?! You didn’t ask how I was feeling or what was going on or-” He’s not asking so much as telling anymore. “-or just _talk_ to me about it! You just decided I didn’t want you anymore, just like that. And then you avoided me. You pushed me out. You had _Jess_ intercept to deal with me!”

The more he talks, the more he realizes how much he’s felt like an outsider lately. Jess’ intervention in the pilot’s lounge was the straw that broke the bantha’s back. How had he lost the connection he’d had with Poe? The growing friendships he’d been forming with the pilots? Being on the outside again felt awful, reminded Finn of years of training with no nickname past “eight-seven.” Reminded him of that trooper, “you’re one of those.” His eyes feel strange and he recognizes the signs that he’s on the verge of tears, real tears like the day Poe crashed back in the jungle outside the base.

“Finn-”

“Why not just say something, huh?” His voice cracks and he can feel the tightness in his face turning into tears. “Why not just tell me something was bothering you?! Why act- why act like this?!”

“FINN.”

Poe’s got him by the shoulders, hands clasped high on his arms, thumbs rubbing gently at the far edges of his clavicles. He looks less upset and more worried, eyes a bit wide and searching Finn’s face.

“Finn, I’m sorry. That was stupid of me, you’re right. I didn’t handle that right at all and I’m sorry. I should have asked. I just- I’ve seen so little of you, and then the other day you were in the freshers changing with Rey and I thought- not that it’s an excuse, it’s not! But buddy, I just thought. I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”

And he feels bad, that Poe could think that. If he’d been around, if he’d made more of an effort to be there for Poe, then maybe he would know how much Finn cared for him. Instead, he thought Finn wanted Rey for some reason, and that was absolutely absurd to his mind.

“But I don’t want Rey,” he responds, voice sounding small even to his own ears. “I never did. I never will. I don’t even want girls. I want you. I miss you. I’m sorry I haven’t been around, Poe. I was trying to do everything and now nothing is getting done right and I miss you.”

Poe’s hands rub up and down his arms and for some reason it makes Finn feel very small. His cheeks feel wet and he wipes at his face with his sleeve, hiccuping a little as he suppresses a tired sob. He feels himself pulled into Poe, embraced in a tight hug. It all feels so silly and he feels so tired. Maybe that’s why it all feels so off.

“I’m sorry, Finn. I thought you maybe wanted something else besides me and you’re right, that was stupid. And it was stupid I didn’t say anything about it to you. I promise I can do better. I will do better. Can you try to make more time for me? I know we’re all busy and there’s a lot of work to do, but I missed you, too. And you know, before all this, I was thinking… you know what? It’s late, why don’t we get some rest and talk about it in the morning.”

He knows that’s what he needs, somewhere deep down, but he still latches on to a few key words.

“You missed me?”

Poe actually laughs. It’s soft and easy but it’s a laugh.

“Of course I missed you, buddy. How could I not?” Poe hugs him a little tighter then and Finn lets himself lean into it, his head on Poe’s shoulder.

“Don’t call me buddy,” he mutters, half-hearted. “You haven’t called me that since before that mission. Feels weird.”

Another soft laugh. “You got it, sweetheart. Let’s get some rest.”

\-------~

There’s no stress when he wakes up. The sun is streaming in through the window. He doesn’t wonder what he’s late for because he doesn’t care. He’s warm and cozy and Poe’s chest is under his cheek, a little stiff with drool but who cares. It isn’t perfect and that’s what he loves, what he misses. It feels so human, the parts of him that are too warm, the slight smell of sweat between them from sleeping under too many blankets, the bit of drool under the corner of his mouth. It’s perfect. He yawns and looks up, sees Poe’s sleeping face, and decides it’s totally fair to drift off back to sleep.

When he wakes up again, it’s to Poe’s hand softly petting his hair, all the way down the nape of his neck. He yawns and looks up at the pilot, feeling far less frenzied and tired than he did yesterday.

“Good morning,” he mutters.

“Almost good afternoon. We really slept in, missed breakfast entirely.”

Finn blinks, a little surprised to hear that. He doesn’t remember the last time he actually slept in, slept so long all at once. He really was tired, apparently.

“I guess we should get up and get lunch?”

“We got time. Do you wanna talk about last night?”

Finn flushes, feels a bit embarrassed, but he does want to talk about it and he should.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, keeping Poe’s gaze. “I haven’t been around much and I feel like I overreacted last night. I was upset and sad and I felt like an outsider and I hated it, I hate feeling that way.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, Finn,” Poe says gently. “I mean, I appreciate it, we made a scene in the lounge, but it wasn’t unfair. I should have talked to you myself a while ago, I shouldn’t have just let this fester and I shouldn’t have had Jess butt in on our problems.”

Finn doesn’t like the way that sounds, ‘our problems.’

“Do we have that many problems?”

For a long moment, Poe seems to hesitate, finding the right words. “I think… I think we keep missing each other. I don’t think either of us really know what we’re doing and I keep being an idiot about it. You’d think I’d know by now to just talk to you, but I guess not.” He chuckles at his own expense, hand moving to rub Finn’s back, gentle over his scar.

“It would help. I’m not- I’m not an idiot, Poe. I know you know that. A lot of stuff here is new, but I want you and I’ve wanted you for a long time and I thought you’d trust that by now. Or at least want me enough to try and keep me if you thought I was slipping away.”

“Finn, I’m not gonna make you stay. I’m not gonna chase after you if you decide you want something different. I know the Jedi are celibate. If that’s what you want… it would be rude of me to try and change your mind.”

But he likes the idea of Poe chasing him, or at least showing that he’s wanted. “I’m not gonna be celibate. I know the Jedi are, but I also know I can choose my own path and that’s not- I’m not choosing celibacy.” Poe’s chest rumbles with a small laugh under his cheek. “And… I’m okay, if you want to chase me sometimes. I’m not going to get this right on the first try. I think we both know that. If it feels like I’m slipping away, tell me? Because then at least I’ll know and it’ll be better than last night. Last night felt awful.”

“Last night did feel pretty awful. I hope we don’t have to do this again, but if we do… I can try. My dad didn’t raise me to push people who didn’t want me, but I can try.”

“But I do want you. I never stopped wanting you, I just got so busy. If that happens again, tell me and we can figure it out. Please?”

Poe nods and Finn smiles. They look at each other for a long moment, holding eye contact. It feels good, it feels easy, and Finn is reminded again how much he missed Poe.

“I have an idea,” Poe says suddenly. “I was going to ask you about it last week, but then-”

“What’s the idea?”

“Well… you were picking up the mechanics of the laser cannons so fast, and I thought- you’re a quick learner, Finn, and you’re smart and intuitive, and I thought maybe… maybe I could teach you to fly?”

There’s no delay in the bright grin that overtakes Finn. He remembers being a boy, trying out for the pilot’s program. He’d failed the aptitude test then, but something told him that it would be different this time. Besides, he had the best pilot in the galaxy to teach him.

“I’m taking that as a yes?” Poe is smiling right back, eyes crinkling at the corners the way Finn loves.

“Yes! Yeah, I would love that. I think I’m almost done training the mechanics on the cannons anyways. I’d love to learn to fly with you.”

“It’s a plan, then. Should we get lunch?”

Finn shakes his head and leans up for a quick kiss. “No, let’s stay in bed a little bit longer.”

\-------~


End file.
